The Circle
by Lisse
Summary: Decades after Luke Skywalker's fall to the Dark Side, a young mechanic discovers how far he must go to protect his family...and why being named after crazy old Ben Kenobi can attract all the wrong kinds of attention. AU from TESB, ignores most of the EU.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Star Wars. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Author's Note: This fic hangs a left at a certain point in _The Empire Strikes Back_ (no, not that point) and heads for parts unknown. Last chance to run screaming, folks.

* * *

_"There are hundreds of space children in the ports and shipping docks of the galaxy - children who never know their fathers other than by unflattering reputation. Oh, many dream that he might be something else, grand and noble and heroic, but all face reality in the end."_  
- El-Seo Null, _One-Night Stand: A Galactic History of Smugglers and Sexuality_, Santi-Solis Academy Ltd.

_"My father spoke of Darth Rage with the greatest respect, but would punish me if I watched old historical holovids. He was never willing to admit that the traitorous Rebel Skywalker had become our Emperor's most trusted servant."_  
- Aelius Bekwin, _Memoirs of an Imperial Childhood_, Coronet City Publishing

* * *

The Circle  
Chapter One

* * *

The tiny settlement of Draco's Well clung to the edge of the Dune Sea, its inhabitants enduring violent sandstorms and temperamental machinery with the same constant, all-encompassing patience. It was a place where the epic feud over Who Took Farstrider's Bantha carried more weight than dying revolutions, and where the most important gossip had more to do with what old Padreic the odd-jobs-man had stolen this time than with far-reaching empires.

Ben Darklighter loved it.

"Hey! Hey, Ben!" His cousin appeared in the doorway of the Darklighters' garage, bouncing on her toes. "There's a bunch of lights over the hills and me and Lora are gonna go borrow her mom's electrobinoculars. Do you wanna come with us?" The words came out in an explosive rush, with hardly a pause for breath.

Ben smiled, but didn't bother to look up from the ancient holoproj in his lap. It was acting up again, so he had flipped it over and was trying to retune it. "What kind of lights?"

"Just flashes right now. I bet it's a space battle. Looks like it's a big one, too."

"You always say it's big, Sasha. It's probably just a couple of smugglers again." He glanced up at her long enough to shrug. "I don't think I need to see this one."

"Some fun you are," Sasha Darklighter said, rolling her eyes. Ben thought he heard her muttering something about boring cousins as she left, but he couldn't be sure. After a moment, he shrugged and went back to fixing the holoproj.

Ben was eighteen years old - five whole years older than Sasha - and he rather liked being dull. He was a short, stocky sort of boy with tousled red hair and eyes that might have been called laser-green if they had belonged to someone more interesting, and he loved Draco's Well precisely because it was so simple and predictable. Nothing ever happened, petty thefts and epic bantha feuds aside, and when the vaporators were between harvests it was easy enough to find a secluded corner and tinker with a recalcitrant bit of machinery. Not that he minded the endless repairs. Methodical and patient even by the settlement's high standards, Ben had a singular talent for fixing anything - a talent that everyone else in Draco's Well seemed to admire, even if Ben himself didn't find it all that unusual.

This particular holoproj had fallen prey to one of the usual problems. As most of the settlement's technology was wont to do, it had simply worn out. Ordinarily Ben wouldn't have bothered with it, but it was the only holoproj in Draco's Well - and while he certainly didn't want to see off-planet news about the latest Imp victory or watch endless reruns of _Captain Fantastik and the Thunder T.I.E.s_, Sasha definitely did. He thought it was best to appease her rather than risk her wrath. He had to live with her, after all.

He stuck his tongue between his teeth and squinted down at the half-corroded bits of circuitry and wiring. The holoproj was older than Ben's Uncle Gavin and Aunt Olivea, so getting it retuned involved finding frequencies manually and configuring things in ways that the original manufacturers had probably never intended. A glance told him that it would take a small miracle to get it working again, one he wasn't sure he could pull off.

Which was why he was mentally rehearsing ways to tell Sasha that she'd have to do without her precious holodramas when the holoproj flickered and hissed and suddenly lit up - at which point he let out a loud and rather embarrassing "_Ack!_" and knocked it out of his lap.

He righted it hastily - no need to damage it worse than it was - and gingerly pressed the power switch. There was a faint whiff of burning circuitry, and with a strange popping sound, the holoproj sprang to life.

Sort of.

Ben stared. Instead of _Thunder T.I.E.s_, he had a jumble of static and nonsensical symbols, like some kind of strange code. The words "Priority Gold Transmission" hovered at the bottom of the projection.

"Oops," he said.

The transmission didn't have the good grace to disappear. It just continued to scroll, as if it belonged in the middle of an isolated settlement instead of somewhere where "priority gold transmission" actually meant something.

Ben worried his lower lip and wondered exactly what to do with this. He was unsettled. Normally he wasn't the sort of person to be interested in strange transmissions, because they were the sort of things that only happened in holodramas and he'd always found the idea of reading them rather rude, but a transmission accompanied by Sasha's mysterious flashes of light was another story. The fact that both things had happened at the same time was probably a coincidence - but then again, what if it wasn't?

So instead of deleting the bizarre transmission like a sensible person, he saved it onto a data chip and carefully stowed it in his pocket for further examination. Trying to puzzle it out might be fun after dinner, when there was nothing else to do but listen to Uncle Gavin's stories and tinker with the cooling system again. After all, he reasoned, it wasn't as if someone was likely to come looking for it, priority transmission or not. No one came to Draco's Well.

With this justification firmly in mind, he deleted the code from the holoproj's memory and went back to retuning it without a second thought.

* * *

Nights at the Darklighter home had a familiar, time-honored rhythm. Admittedly it was a rhythm that involved a lot of complaining and general fussiness, but Ben knew it the same way he knew every tool in the family's garage, and he had always thought it was comforting in its strange way.

First came Uncle Gavin asking about the vaporators ("Number three's still broken.") and Aunt Olivea wondering when they ought to make their monthly run to Anchorhead for supplies ("Sasha's outgrown her shirts. Again.") Then they all settled down for an ever more meager dinner, and Ben got to sit quietly, eat, and watch the newest big issues of the day happen to other people.

"Murenn and Sarai say there's been another attack out past Anchorhead," Aunt Olivea said as an opener.

Uncle Gavin didn't look up from his meal. This was a familiar topic. "Sand People again?"

"They're getting worse," Aunt Olivea muttered. "Bolder, too. It wouldn't kill the garrison to patrol here once in a while."

Sasha scowled and shook her head. "Imps can't catch Sand People. They'd just make trouble for us."

"Don't talk like that," Aunt Olivea said, right as Ben kicked his cousin under the table.

Uncle Gavin helped himself to another piece of flatbread. "Why shouldn't she? She's right. We don't want Imps around here."

"A couple conscripts wouldn't matter. Unless you plan to antagonize them somehow."

"Hmph," Uncle Gavin muttered.

Aunt Olivea wasn't about to give up. "We're not _safe_ here," she snapped. "Mos Espa's close enough to the garrison to keep most of the raiders away. We could stay with my aunt until we got back on our feet and find our own place."

Ben bit back a groan. Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - the friendly arguing went a bit too far. There were some topics his aunt and uncle didn't talk about by mutual agreement. Moving should have been one of them. But now Aunt Olivea had brought it up again, which meant any chance of a semi-peaceful dinner had officially gone out of the window.

Sure enough, Uncle Gavin frowned up at his wife. "That's out of the question."

"The vaporator's still broken - the one we haven't finished paying off, Gavin!" Aunt Olivea set her plate down with a loud _clunk_. "We can't live off the garage anymore, not with the Sand People scaring off all our business!"

"Lora says they bring in slavers to get people who don't pay off their loans," Sasha murmured at Ben from her end of the table. Ben - who was well aware of all the money they owed and all the problems it could cause, and who really wished everyone would stop fighting long enough for him to finish his dinner - gave her a _look_ and kicked her again.

Uncle Gavin had gone very quiet, which was never a good sign. "We'll make do, Olivea. If I need to, I'll find a job in Mos Espa between harvests. You and Ben can watch the garage while I'm gone."

"I can go."

Ben found himself staring at three slightly bewildered faces. He almost never said anything when the arguments got serious. Truth be told, he was surprised he had spoken up.

"Not by yourself," Aunt Olivea said at last. "It's too dangerous."

"We need the money, and Uncle Gavin knows more about running a garage than I do." Ben attempted a smile. "It'd only be for a season, and if it means we can stay here - "

"_No._" Aunt Olivea stood up, hands on her hips, so she could tower over him. "You're not leaving here by yourself, Ben. Under any circumstances."

"He's not leaving here, period." Uncle Gavin reached over and gently tugged Aunt Olivea back into her seat. "You know what Mos Espa's like. He'll get himself killed, or worse."

"If we're with him - "

"_Or worse_, Olivea."

There was something behind those words, some meaning that Ben couldn't quite catch. Whatever it was, it made Aunt Olivea grimace and bow her head in defeat. The fight was over almost before it had begun, but thick tension remained hanging over his aunt and uncle - not because of Mos Espa or money, but because of _or worse_.

But what could possibly be worse than slavers?

Ben pushed his plate away, suddenly anything but hungry. "C'mon," he murmured to Sasha. "Let's take another look at that vaporator."

Aunt Olivea looked up sharply. "It's getting dark out."

He shrugged. "We'll be careful. Maybe I can get the vaporator running if it isn't overheated."

His aunt looked ready to protest, but Uncle Gavin just shook his head at her. "He's right. We need it working. Hurry back if you see anything odd," he added to Ben, "and take the carbine."

"I'll get it." Sasha stacked her plate on the counter and went to retrieve the family's antiquated blaster carbine from its home by the front door. That left Ben momentarily alone with his aunt and uncle, neither of whom seemed inclined to talk to him.

"I'm careful," he said when the silence felt too heavy. "You know I am. I'd be careful in Mos Espa too. I promise I wouldn't do anything stupid."

Uncle Gavin all but shoved him after Sasha, who had already disappeared out the door. "Don't make me hold you to that."

* * *

The Darklighters owned four vaporators around the perimeter of Draco's Well, more than any other family. Along with the garage, they made enough money to live extremely well by the settlement's standards.

Or they had been making enough, anyway.

"I dunno why you're trying to repair this," Sasha muttered as she helped Ben pry the vaporator's maintenance hatch open. "It's a piece of junk. We got cheated."

"You heard your dad. We can't go to Mos Espa." Ben sighed and leaned back on his heels, listening to his cousin with half an ear. In his mind's eye he pictured the circuitry and wiring that ran through the vaporator, pinpointing all the weak points where things could and did go wrong. "I think one of the converters fried. Hand me the welder, would you?"

Sasha dug the tool out of their landspeeder's toolbox and pressed it into his hand. "What's so bad about Mos Espa?"

"It's big, it's crowded, and people get shot a lot."

"But at least stuff happens there!" Sasha jabbed a finger at the sky, shaded purple and gold as the twin suns set over the hills. "I bet people in Mos Espa know what that space battle was about!" When Ben didn't answer - because this, too, was an old and familiar argument - she scowled and crouched next to him. "Are you really gonna stay here your whole life?"

He shrugged. "I think so."

"What about finding your father? Don't you want to do that?"

_Not this again._ Ben sighed. This was another topic that no one was supposed to bring up. "My father was a smuggler," he said as patiently and reasonably as he could. "I don't think he knows I exist. Why should I go looking for him?"

"Because you could, that's why." She hauled a portable lamp out of the family's battered old landspeeder and began to rig it up. "Maybe he could give you a job."

"I like my job here, thanks." When Sasha opened her mouth to splutter at him, he sighed and held up his hand to cut off her protests. "I don't want to meet him, okay? I'm happy here. I'll help you find a job in Mos Espa or something when you're old enough, but..." He trailed off with an awkward shrug, his gaze still locked on the vaporator. This wasn't a conversation he particularly wanted to have.

"Ben?"

Her voice actually sounded strained. Despite himself, Ben felt bad for getting annoyed with her. He knew Sasha didn't love Draco's Well the way he did - that she was practically counting down the days until she could copy their cousin Biggs and go find adventure somewhere offworld and hopefully not get killed in the process - and it wasn't really his place to blame her for being reckless.

He finally looked up from the vaporator. "Look, I didn't mean - "

"_Ben_."

Sasha wasn't even looking at him. She had risen into a half-crouch, staring at some point in the rapidly darkening sky. Her eyes were wide and round. Ben followed her gaze and instantly spotted what she had - three bright lights growing bigger with each passing second.

Ships heading right for Draco's Well. Big ships.

"Shut off the light," he whispered.

Sasha scrambled for the lamp and all but ripped it out of its power source. "What are those?"

"I don't know." He glanced at the distant lights of the settlement and then at the rapidly approaching ships. "I - I think they might be from Mos Espa."

"_Slavers?_" Her voice rose into a squeak of terror.

Ben fought down rising panic, as well as the odd urge to glare at her and ask if this was enough adventure for her. Getting angry wouldn't do any good. There was no point in trying to race those ships back to Draco's Well, not in the family's rundown landspeeder, and they had no radios or comm systems to call ahead and warn anyone. There was nowhere at all to hide.

Something - he wasn't even sure what - drew his attention to the vaporator. He flung himself back down beside it and began to frantically sort through his tools.

Sasha stared at him as if he had gone completely mad. "What are you _doing?_"

"Shutting this down." He didn't think he had the time to explain things to her, but he knew that if he didn't, she would panic and take off for Draco's Well anyway. "It's dark, right? They'll have to use energy scanners to find anyone outside the settlement." He wedged a hydrospanner into the tangled wires and began to shut off connections. In a vague, distant sort of way he wondered what Uncle Gavin would say when he realized his nephew had destroyed their new vaporator for good - but then he thought that maybe Uncle Gavin would never get to tell him anything ever again, and he desperately tried to ignore the unpleasant knot in his stomach.

After what seemed like an eternity, the vaporator's lights blinked off. Ben kicked the tools aside and climbed back to his feet. His explanation seemed to have snapped Sasha out of her stupor, because she was leaning into the landspeeder and quickly shutting off all the emergency power. Ben glanced over his shoulder, ran over to her, and yanked her after him under the landspeeder.

Almost before he had touched the ground, he heard a noise like the world's loudest insect pass over their heads. He wrapped one arm around Sasha and tried to peer up at the ships without revealing himself. For a moment he caught a glimpse of a gleaming silver transport ship, its sides lit up by dozens of windows. Then a familiar spoked circle caught his eye and he rolled further under the landspeeder with his eyes squeezed shut.

_Imps._

Ben felt nothing for or against the Empire. He certainly didn't loathe it the way Uncle Gavin and Sasha did. Whatever the Imps did, the people affected by them never came to Draco's Well. Neither did the Imps themselves. No one cared about his home.

Except now the Imps did. They cared enough to bring three troop transports. He shivered, suddenly chilled in a way that had nothing to do with the rapidly cooling night air. The knot in his stomach had gotten larger and tighter, and there was something about the sight of those ships that made him want to drop everything and run away as far and fast as he could.

"They're gone." Sasha slowly removed her hands from her ears as the sounds began to fade. "Ben, those were - "

He shook his head, not willing to hear anyone say the word, and rolled out from under the landspeeder. By the time Sasha followed him, he was collecting his scattered tools. "Where's the carbine?"

"In the landspeeder." She hugged herself and stared at the lights from Draco's Well. The three ships seemed to be spiraling toward it, as if they all planned to land squarely in the middle of the settlement. "What are we gonna do?"

He opened his mouth, but no brilliant idea was forthcoming. "We can stay at Hermit's Hut for the night," he said at last. "There might be an old comm there. We can call your mom and dad, and if nothing happens we can come back in the morning."

"You're just gonna _leave?_"

Sometimes he really hated being the dull, sensible one. "What else can we do?" he asked as he bundled up the last of his tools. "Those are - " He still couldn't make himself say _Imps_, so he settled for powering the landspeeder back up. "What if they want to do something bad? We hid so they wouldn't see us, remember?"

Her breath hitched. He couldn't see her face, but he knew she was crying anyway. "You're such a coward."

"I guess." Ben pushed away from the landspeeder and walked over to her, because he was afraid if he stopped moving he would wind up on the sand, shaking too hard to get back up. "You can call me whatever you want," he said as he gently steered her toward the passenger seat. "I'll let you swear at me and everything tomorrow. Please get in the landspeeder."

Sniffling and glaring, calling him all kinds of things under her breath, she did.

* * *

Hermit's Hut was in the middle of nowhere, even to Ben. It was generally avoided by Sand People and Jawas alike, and every settler child had grown up listening to frightening stories about Old Kenobi's Ghost. The most popular one was about the moisture farmers the crazy old man had killed, and about how he had kidnapped the Skywalker boy and dragged him off to parts unknown - and everyone knew what had become of Skywalker, of course.

Ben didn't like that story very much.

He didn't particularly like Hermit's Hut either - the place had always made him feel like something was staring at the back of his head - but it seemed like the safest place to hide out for the night. He pried the door open without too much trouble and herded Sasha inside, wrapping her up in the blanket from the landspeeder's emergency kit. By the time he had finished unpacking things like the carbine and the portable lamp, she was already asleep on the floor.

Which left him alone with the hut. Great.

A quick inspection of the room revealed a couple of sealed chests, several pipes laid out on a table, and a tiny fold-out kitchen unit that, on closer inspection, proved to be out of fuel. Ben slid it back into place before he turned his attention to the chests. It felt invasive and wrong to be going through Old Kenobi's things, but he wasn't in the mood to worry about that. He would just have to feel terrible about it later.

He had never turned his mechanical skills to opening locks before, but Old Kenobi's didn't provide much resistance. They sprang open after a few moments' fiddling. The chests proved to contain a couple articles of clothing, a few cloaks, some datadisks, and some kind of cylinder that produced a long red blade when activated. Ben spent an alarming minute trying not to cut off his own foot before he figured out how to turn the thing off. He decided it was some kind of bizarre laser cutter and stowed it with the rest of his tools.

When the chests produced nothing else of interest, he switched off the portable lamp and spread one of the dusty brown cloaks on the floor beside Sasha, wrapping himself up in it and settling the blaster carbine within easy reach. He expected to lie awake for half the night, shivering and staring at the distant curving shape of the Hut's ceiling, and so was more surprised than anyone when, utterly exhausted, he drifted off almost immediately.

He only woke up once, when he thought he heard a man and woman murmuring to each other in low, anxious voices - but when he opened his eyes, there was only Sasha's familiar snoring. Suppressing a shiver, Ben huddled in the cloak and went back to sleep, lulled by the sound of imaginary arguments on the edge of his hearing.


	2. Chapter 2

___"The odd-jobs-man plays a vital role in Tatooine settler culture. Part trader, part repairman, part entertainer, he knows the Jundland Wastes better than anyone on the planet and often serves as the only link between isolated settlements and the outside world."_  
- Mireth Dann, _"We Are The Sun's Children": Life and Death on Desert Worlds_, Carida Academy Ltd.  


___Lieutenant Drai: Captain, no! This isn't an ordinary Rebel! This is a Jedi Knight! They're killers!  
Captain Fantastik: Jedi are just like every other traitor. You shoot 'em, they die.  
- Captain Fantastik and the Thunder T.I.E.s_, Episode 127: "A Traitor in Their Midst"  


* * *

The Circle  
Chapter Two

* * *

Ben woke up to clanking cooling pipes and the sound of someone swearing.

It was odd swearing, too - quiet and not terribly inventive, but with a sort of steady cadence that suggested the speaker was doing it more out of habit than actual anger. It was coming from directly outside the hut's sealed door, along with shuffling noises and muffled thumps. Someone was trying to get around the lock.

"Sasha." Ben pushed himself up on one arm and reached over to shake his cousin's shoulder. He kept his eyes locked on the door and dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. "_Sasha, wake up._"

After a moment she blinked blearily at him. "Muh?"

"_Shh!_" He gestured to the door and the swearing noises.

All the blood drained out of Sasha's face. "Imps?" she hissed.

Ben shook his head. "I don't know." Some corner of his mind was running through possible ways out - but there weren't any. Hermit's Hut was just like every other building designed to keep out the midday heat. It was low to the ground with no windows and only one door, and it was built on solid rock. He still had the strange laser cutter, but it would take time to cut another exit through the walls, and by then whoever was outside would be well aware of what was going on.

"We're trapped, aren't we." It wasn't even a question. Sasha shifted closer to him, still tangled up in the emergency blanket. "What're we gonna do?"

_Panic?_ He pushed the stray thought away and grabbed for the carbine. "Take this and find somewhere to hide," he said as he climbed to his feet.

"This is _stupid_," she hissed, but took the carbine and scrambled up after him.

"You're the one who takes potshots at womprats," he said as he began to dig through his tools.

"So what're you gonna do? Lecture them to death?"

At least she seemed to have her sense of humor back. Holding the carbine probably helped. "I've got this," he said as he extracted the laser cutter from the mess. The cylinder felt awkward in his hand, but it would do. Besides, he knew Sasha was a better shot than he was. He'd only fired the carbine at rocks, and that was just because Uncle Gavin had insisted he know how to hold the thing.

"That? _That?_" Sasha stared at the cylinder, then at his face. It was an odd look too, as if he had suddenly changed right before her eyes. "Are you _crazy?_"

"Go hide already!"

For a moment he thought she wasn't going to listen. Then she flicked the carbine's safety off and crouched behind the kitchen unit.

Which left Ben facing the door with nothing more than an oversized construction tool.

He turned the thing on with a too-loud _snap-hiss_ and held it carefully away from him. _This_ is _stupid_, the familiar logical corner of his mind said. _If these are Imps or slavers, I'm going to die._

Then the door slid open and he stopped thinking much altogether. Instead he brought the red blade around with a yell, very nearly cutting off his own arm in the process, and stared up its length at -

Sasha popped up out of her hiding place. "_Padreic?_"

The odd-jobs-man glaring down at Ben was very tall and leaned heavily on a cane, but he still wouldn't have attracted much notice anywhere on Tatooine. He had white hair and sun-browned skin and was holding what looked suspiciously like a lockpick in one long-fingered, gnarled hand.

He also appeared to be very, very angry.

"Turn that off this instant, boy!"

Ben did, hastily clipping the laser cutter to his belt. "Sorry."

Old Padreic didn't look terribly convinced. "That's a fine way to get yourself killed." He hobbled into the hut as if he owned it, shutting and locking the door behind him. "I should have thought to check here first. I've been all over the Jundland Wastes looking for you."

Ben wondered if he could get away with banging his head on a wall. He had never really liked Padreic, whom he found inherently _wrong_ in some way that he couldn't quite pinpoint, but he knew how well the odd-jobs-man knew the land around the settlements.

"Did Mom and Dad comm you?" Sasha asked as she carefully set the carbine on the floor. "Ben said we were gonna go back this morning," she added with a glare in his general direction. He did his best to ignore it.

"Ah." The old man gave Ben an odd, searching look, then nodded to the cylinder dangling from his belt. "Did you find that here?"

Ben nodded, feeling very foolish.

"And you spent the night here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. I was afraid you'd gone running into the Dune Sea." Padreic straightened up as much as he ever did and looked from one to the other, his pale eyes unreadable. "What made you choose here?"

"No one comes here," Ben said. He could feel Sasha glaring at the back of his head and realized he probably sounded less polite than he should have. "Except you, I guess."

"_I'm_ here because I was looking for the pair of you." Padreic sighed. "The Anchorhead Darklighters were out all night trying to find you. They thought I might have more luck."

The half-forgotten sick, cold feeling from the previous night suddenly returned in full force. Ben swallowed around a suddenly dry throat. "Padreic," he said slowly and carefully, because he was jumping to conclusions he didn't want to reach, "we don't even talk to the Anchorhead Darklighters. Why are they looking for us?"

"What happened to my parents?" Sasha demanded.

Padreic smiled for an instant, but the gesture was sad and humorless. "The Empire destroyed Draco's Well and Noon Ridge last night. We've counted sixteen casualties so far."

Sasha hurried over until she was standing right next to Ben, leaning on him as if she needed him for support. "Just tell me about my mom and dad!" Her voice cracked.

"No one can find your father, but there is some reason to think he's being held at the Imperial garrison in Mos Espa." Padreic hesitated a moment before continuing. "They buried your mother this morning."

Ben managed to catch his cousin before her legs gave out completely. He lowered her down to the floor and sat beside her, feeling as if some fundamental part of his world had been ripped away from him. His aunt was dead and his uncle was missing. The home he had always counted on to be safe and unimportant was just _gone_. It had been gone the moment Sasha had seen those transport ships.

Sasha was shaking her head slowly and saying something that may have been "no" over and over again. She was crying too hard for him to tell. Helpless to do anything else, he hugged her and rocked her while Padreic watched them with an odd, detached expression on his face.

* * *

Padreic insisted on getting them out of Hermit's Hut as soon as possible. "The Empire hasn't noticed you yet," he told them in his rasping voice, "but they will soon."

Ben didn't feel like arguing with him. He didn't feel much of anything at all, really. Moving mechanically, he bundled up the cloak and blanket with the rest of the emergency supplies and stowed them in the landspeeder.

"Are you keeping that?" Sasha asked, nodding to the cylinder dangling from his belt. It was the first time she had spoken since Padreic had delivered his news.

Ben blinked down at it. "I guess so. It might come in handy for clearing out the rubble."

When she said nothing, he went back to carefully reattaching the portable lamp to its power source. He was already thinking ahead to how he could go about repairing the family's home. If it was too damaged, they would have to ask for a loan from the Anchorhead Darklighters - not something he relished doing, but probably safer than asking the brokers in Mos Espa, not when they'd have to worry about paying for that vaporator too -

"It's a lightsaber, Ben."

He looked up from his tangle of wires. "Huh?"

"It's a lightsaber. I saw it on the holo once." Sasha fidgeted, as if she didn't know exactly what she wanted to say. "Jedi Knights used it," she said at last, "and - and I think maybe you shouldn't wear it."

"Oh." He unclipped it and shoved it with the rest of his tools, attempting a small smile. "You don't think I'm a Jedi, right?"

Sasha threw a handful of sand at him. "Not funny," she muttered. But she seemed a little more normal after that, which was what Ben wanted anyway. He needed his cousin to keep going until they figured out what had happened to Uncle Gavin. Then they could both mourn as much as they needed to.

He lugged the lamp and his tools out to the landspeeder. After a moment's thought, he shoved the tools all the way under the emergency kit, where they would be almost impossible to spot. It seemed like a stupid thing to do - he bet almost no one from Draco's Well even knew what a Jedi _was_ - but if it made Sasha feel better, he'd do it.

"You have an aunt in Mos Espa, don't you?" Padreic asked as he hobbled over.

Ben nodded. "Great-Aunt Liza. She's - she was Aunt Olivea's aunt."

"And she'll lie for you if she has to?"

How was he supposed to know that? "I don't know her that well. She and Uncle Gavin don't get along."

"Hmph. I suppose the pair of you can stay with her as a last resort. Just until this blows over," he added when Ben started to object. "Then you can go home."

It should have been reassuring to hear that, but it wasn't. Ben associated home with permanence, and nothing would ever be like it was with Aunt Olivea gone. "I guess so," he said, because it seemed like the polite thing to do.

Padreic smiled faintly. "You don't trust me."

Great. He had no idea how to answer that. He settled for taking longer than necessary to adjust the emergency kit. "I don't know you very well, sir."

"You can tell something's not right about me, can't you."

Ben's breath caught. Suddenly he had visions of elaborate traps and Imp ships flying over the horizon, because of course he had been right - he didn't know Padreic at _all_.

But the old odd-jobs-man just laughed softly. "I'm not going to turn you in. I'm here to find you and that's what I'm doing." He patted Ben on the shoulder. "Get your cousin moving. We're taking your landspeeder into Mos Espa."

"I thought I could leave Sasha in Anchorhead." Ben's heart was still hammering against his ribs. Somehow Padreic felt more wrong than ever, as if he ought to have been out of focus and wasn't. "She'd be safe there, right?"

"And where do you think the Empire will look, once they realize someone's missing?" The old man shook his head. "Believe it or not, right now Sasha is safest with you."

That didn't make him feel any better, but before he could point out that this wasn't saying very much, Padreic turned around and shuffled back to the hut. Ben stared after him, wondering if he ought to just disobey him and take Sasha somewhere more familiar than Mos Espa. But of course the old man was right. He didn't understand why the Imps had attacked Draco's Well, but sooner or later they were going to realize that they had missed two people. Maybe that was why they had taken Uncle Gavin.

Ben scowled and went back to securing the rest of their supplies, and wished with all his heart that Padreic wasn't right.

* * *

Mos Espa was located quite a ways from Hermit's Hut. Even with Ben piloting the landspeeder much faster than he would have liked, they had to stop for lunch in the scant shade of a rocky outcropping. Padreic produced dried meat and water from somewhere, and Ben and Sasha ate in silence while he sat a few paces away, almost as if he were keeping watch.

By the time the unfamiliar sprawl of the spaceport came into view, the afternoon was half gone. Ben squinted and shaded his eyes against the setting suns, trying to get his bearings. "It's _huge_. How're we supposed to find anyone in all that?"

"This is a small settlement by most planets' standards," Padreic said mildly. "Just follow my directions and try not to look too conspicuous."

"Easy for you to say," Ben muttered, but eased the landspeeder forward. Beside him, Sasha all but climbed on top of her seat to gape.

Mos Espa was enormous. Hundreds of domed buildings huddled and twisted in on themselves, following curving streets that didn't seem to have any logic or reason behind them. The streets were full of pedestrians, vehicles, and creatures of all shapes and sizes fighting for room. Everyone seemed to be shouting - advertising wares, arguing, or yelling greetings and directions to each other. Ben was suddenly very grateful that Padreic had come along. The old man seemed to know exactly where everything was, but after the third or fourth turn through the crowded, unlabeled streets and alleys, Ben was hopelessly lost.

"Where are we going?" Sasha asked in what she probably thought was a whisper.

Padreic smiled and nodded to some sort of lumpy brown creature sitting against a wall, apparently selling the rusted junk piled in front of it. "I have a home here. It's small, but it will do."

Ben frowned. He hated it when plans changed. "What about going to our great-aunt's house?"

"We'll do that tomorrow, after we know exactly what trouble your uncle has got himself into." Padreic nodded to a squat little door, utterly indistinguishable from the dozens of others lining either side of the narrow alley. "Here we are. It would be best to get inside before dark."

It was hot and stuffy inside the tiny house - and, somehow, it seemed much smaller than Hermit's Hut had been. It was also much more cluttered. Every available surface overflowed with circuit boards, diagrams, and all kinds of oddities that Ben had never seen before. Piles of ventilators and eyepieces from the Sand People's masks balanced precariously on the remnants of a power droid. Coils of hair-thin silver wire flowed over what looked like a hoverball award and some kind of metal sphere before they disappeared under a giant pile of mismatched robes.

Padreic didn't seem terribly apologetic about the mess. He hobbled to the little kitchen - the one half-covered in flickering, half-tuned holoprojs - and began to pull things out of cabinets. "Bring your equipment inside," he said without looking back at them. "I have a place to hide the landspeeder, but it's best not to leave anything out in the open."

"There's no room for anything else here," Sasha muttered. Ben elbowed her in the arm, but all that did was make her mumble incoherently about how stupid he could be. At least she wasn't crying now.

By the time they hauled everything inside, Padreic had extracted a table and two completely different chairs from the mess. He laid out equally mismatched food, some of which Ben had never seen in his life, and gave the cousins an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I won't be joining you. I still have errands I need to do."

Sasha scowled at him. "But my dad - "

"Nothing will happen to your father tonight. I'll find out if the garrison is looking for the two of you yet, and we'll figure out what to do from there. Until then," he added, and suddenly his voice was full of stern authority, "neither of you is to leave this place. Mos Espa is no place for settlers. Is that understood?"

Ben nodded and, just out of old habit, kicked Sasha's shin before she could argue with him.

Padreic smiled. The aura of great power and strength vanished as if it had never been. "If you will excuse me," he said with a nod. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and hobbled out of the house, sealing the door behind him.

He was hardly gone a moment before Sasha stood up. "This is _stupid_. I'm gonna go find Dad."

"Do you know where the garrison is?" Ben tugged her back into her seat. "You heard Padreic. We've got to stay here."

"Since when are you listening to him? You don't trust him - I can tell!"

"Since I don't have any _choice_." He scrubbed his face, desperately wishing that he could go home - or that he still had a home to go back to. "I'm not sure Padreic's what he says he is, but he hasn't turned us in so far."

"That's another thing. What makes you think the Imps are gonna want us? I know that Mom - " Her voice faltered for a moment, but she squared her shoulders and changed tactics. "What I mean is, we've only got Padreic telling us that the Imps would want to arrest us. We don't even know what they wanted!"

She kept talking after that, but Ben didn't hear her. Instead he heard that one sentence echoing in his head over and over again, growing steadily louder and more accusatory.

_"We don't even know what they wanted!"_

_I do._

"Sasha." He hardly recognized his own voice.

His cousin stopped mid-rant and stared at him. "What is it?"

With shaking hands, Ben dug through his pocket and produced the tiny, forgotten data chip. He set it on the table right next to the water pitcher. "That's it," he said softly. "That's what the Imps were looking for."

"It was _you?_" Sasha was on her feet again, but this time her hands were opening and closing convulsively, as if she wanted to throw something at him and was barely restraining herself. "First you've got the lightsaber and - and now _this_ - Mom didn't have to die! You could've - "

"Sasha, _stop_."

She did.

Ben rubbed at his stinging eyes. This was no time to get upset. Someone had to be the adult. "It's a data transmission. I don't know what's on it. I found it when I was fixing the holoproj. Do you remember that?"

For a second he thought that maybe she didn't, but then she nodded. "So I could watch the news broadcasts."

"So you could watch _Thunder T.I.E.s_," he corrected. That almost got a smile out of her. "It was encoded. I couldn't read anything, so I saved it to look at later. I don't know what's on it, I swear."

Sasha shook her head and began to pace back and forth as much as the cramped little house allowed. "They must've been pretty desperate," she said at last.

"Who? The Imps?"

"Whoever sent that thing." She stopped by the pile of holoprojs, hugging herself as if to ward off a sudden chill. "I'd bet anything someone sent it during that battle me and Lora saw. It was almost over our heads, so - so maybe Draco's Well and Noon Ridge were the only settlements the transmitter could reach. Maybe it's a Rebel transmission! It could be important!"

Ben sighed. "There isn't a Rebellion anymore."

"That's not what Dad says."

"And did you ever stop to think that maybe that's why the Imps took him?" When Sasha just glared at him, he pocketed the data chip and pointedly attempted to go back to dinner, such as it was. "I'm not going to get rid of it, if that's what you're worried about."

"Are you gonna tell the Imps you have it?"

"No. Even if I wanted to," he added around a mouthful of something that had probably once been a fruit, "how would I explain why we ran away? The only reason to give it to them is if they'll give your dad back in exchange."

Sasha nodded and finally returned to her seat. "Can you at least _try_ to decode it?"

Ben felt like banging his head on the tabletop. "I _can't_." Sasha wilted, looking utterly dejected, which was probably what made him keep talking. "But maybe I can figure out who sent it. The carrier signal probably didn't have any codes."

Which meant he might be staying up all night, muttering and not-really-cursing under his breath as he wrestled with Padreic's unfamiliar holoproj collection - but Sasha looked happier, which made any inconvenience worth it.

"I'm sorry I ever called you boring," she said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand.

It was probably intended as a compliment, so Ben smiled back at her and tried not to feel just a little offended.

* * *

Halfway across Mos Espa, Padreic the odd-jobs-man ducked his head and shuffled into the recesses of a cellar bar. He instantly stood out from the rest of the patrons - spacers, pod-racers, and smugglers, all of them - but no one seemed inclined to bother him. On the contrary, the regulars shuffled out of his way. Bent old man or not, he had an almost bottomless collection of rare, one-of-a-kind scrap, and there was no telling when his reasonably-priced scrounging might come in handy.

Cane clicking on the sticky floor, he aimed for a shadowed booth recessed in the far wall and didn't bother to ask permission as he awkwardly settled into the empty seat. "I'm getting too old for this."

The booth's other occupant gave him a look that would have been pure loathing if he had been able to focus his eyes. As it was, he shoved an enormous tankard of something corrosive out of his way and planted an elbow on the table. "What the hell do you want?"

"The pleasure of your company, of course. Can't a man visit an old friend?"

The only answer was a disbelieving snort.

Padreic shook his head in disgust and gingerly folded his hands on the tabletop. "I'm fortunate you're here now. I need your help."

"'Course you do." The man across the table didn't sound at all surprised. "Who've you dug your claws into now?"

"A pair of very interesting survivors from one of the Dune Sea settlements. A set of cousins, actually."

The reaction was immediate and might have been startling to anyone who hadn't been expecting it. Padreic had been, so he simply leaned back in his seat and watched the rapid emotions that flashed across his companion's face - some of which were very complicated.

Plain old-fashioned fury won out, judging by the way the man's lip curled back in a snarl. "If you think you can - "

"I can what? Sell them to the Empire?" Padreic suppressed a flash of anger - he would have reacted far worse than his companion was, had their situations been reversed - and managed to keep his voice steady and low. "You must know what happened to Gavin Darklighter by now. The garrison will start looking for his family shortly, once they figure out that he knows nothing. I've met people like Ben and Sasha. They invite trouble."

"Yeah, I noticed." The man ran his fingers through greying hair. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Get them off world before the garrison finds them. Perhaps your son could - "

The man's face hardened. "Mention him again and I'll kill you."

That, too, should have been expected. "Of course," Padreic said calmly. "My mistake. Will you take them off world or not?"

"Sure. Why not?" The man's sudden resolve vanished, replaced by a groggy drunk fumbling for his tankard. "What the hell did they do anyway?"

Ah. One of the _easy_ answers. Padreic eased himself to his feet and leaned heavily on his cane. "Your guess is as good as mine. Given the situation, I'm assuming it's something bad."

"No wonder you're involved." The man gestured to the tankard. "You gonna cover this or what?"

"Pathetic," Padreic muttered, but the man didn't seem to be terribly offended. Possibly he hadn't heard him. Shaking his head, the odd-jobs-man dropped a few coins on the tabletop and began the long, painful walk back to his tiny home.


	3. Chapter 3

___"The Rebellion died with Organa. Its remnants will wither away once her son and his fellow traitors are apprehended. The last believers in the myth of the Republic are dying, if not already dead. Now is our time – our future."_  
- Grand Moff Kayel Normindi Mar, "Speech Delivered on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Galactic Empire"  


___"By some estimates, Calrissian Shipping, its partners and its subsidiaries own or are owed no less than one-twentieth of all privately owned property in Mid-Rim Imperial space. Its freighters and tugs account for one-fifth of all government-funded bulk transport and one-quarter of armament shipments. Coupled with savvy investments and unmatched access to lucrative Imperial contracts, some might argue that it is currently the second-most-powerful entity in the entire galaxy."_  
- Mirkos Denoff'rin_, __Aiming For the Core: Inspirational Tales of Personal and Financial Success,_ Lumar & Goyd Inc. (a division of Calrissian Shipping Corporation)  


* * *

The Circle  
Chapter Three

* * *

Hal Horn hated Tatooine.

To be fair, he wasn't terribly fond of the last three planets he'd made deliveries on either – but _this_ went above and beyond mere dislike. He loathed Tatooine for its unique awfulness, particularly its sand and its suns and most especially its sheer number of bars. No one needed that many damn bars.

Hal was twenty years old, tall as humans went, and technically under a death sentence in most of the Core. He was also on edge and had been ever since he had set foot on this hellhole of a planet two days before. Something unpleasant was nagging at the back of his head, as if he had forgotten a critical detail and his subconscious was just waiting for an unpleasant reminder to happen. It wasn't a nice feeling to have, especially when he knew perfectly well that his hunches carried slightly more weight than most people's. Under the circumstances, he felt he had every right to be cranky.

Of course, the fact that his captain was missing and presumed drunk wasn't helping his temper.

Muttering to himself, he unclipped his comlink from his belt and flicked it on. "Mel? I can't raise the captain. Is he back on the ship yet?"

The comlink hissed and crackled for a moment before his shipmate answered. "What's the matter? Not enjoying the sand?"

"Ha ha. Don't think I wouldn't rather be guarding the ship."

"With bad rations and a fragged-up droid for company?" Hal heard the poorly-hidden amusement in her voice. "I don't know where Solo is, but I want samples if he found anything good."

Hal rolled his eyes. "Just be ready to take off in a hurry."

"Expecting trouble?"

"Not really." He surveyed the crowded streets for a moment, but saw nothing more dangerous than what looked like a couple of local thugs. "Just a hunch."

"Don't try any of your fragging mind-tricks," she said – and although her voice was as light and unconcerned as ever, Hal caught the worried undercurrent. "I was checking the Imps' channels when you commed me. There's a cruiser overhead – one of the big ones. They took out two settlements last night looking for something."

At least now he knew where the constant sense of mortal peril was coming from. He dropped his voice almost to a whisper and hoped the noise from the crowd would keep anyone from overhearing. "Do you think Rage is up there?"

"Dunno. Don't much care, either – but I'm not saving your hide if you and Solo get yourselves caught."

"Love you too," Hal muttered, and heard her grumble something incoherent before he switched the comlink off.

Which left him right back where he had started: out looking for whatever bar his captain had picked, without any clue as to where to start. Only now there was a pressing time limit with the Imp cruiser overhead. Hal was worse than dead if the Imps caught him – but his captain?

He didn't want to think what Rage would do to Han.

He risked reaching out with the Force, searching the immediate area for anything that felt like a familiar presence. Mos Espa wasn't especially big to someone who had been born on Corellia, and the convoluted jumble of beings, sentient and otherwise, was slightly easier to handle than it might have been elsewhere. It was still a bit like trying to find a single rock in an uncharted asteroid field, but he hoped that Han's familiar presence would stand out.

It almost didn't. After a few moments of searching, Hal began to become aware of something on the periphery of his mind. It was nebulous and agitated and so huge that it took him a second to understand that it was a Force presence – and _that_ realization made him stop dead in his tracks, never mind the crowd grumbling and swearing at him for blocking traffic. He circled it warily, wishing he had bothered to learn more than the bare basics from his father and Han's son, but whoever-it-was gave no sign of being aware of him. Nonetheless, Hal decided to err on the side of caution and kept away from it. If it was malicious, he didn't want to attract its attention.

As he edged away, his mind caught on a much smaller and much more familiar presence – Han, probably not fifty meters from where Hal was standing at that very moment. He allowed himself a shaky sigh of relief and hurried in that direction, glad to be away from yet another reason to hate this damn planet.

* * *

No matter what Sasha seemed to think, it wasn't hard for Ben to figure out where the mysterious message had come from. Most comm systems included some kind of identification code, or so Uncle Gavin had told him once. Unless someone had gone to the effort to remove it, that carrier code would tell him what kind of ship the message had been sent from and maybe even whom the ship was registered with.

Not that _that_ necessarily meant anything, because it there was one thing Ben had learned working in the family garage, it was just how many stolen vehicles there were in the galaxy. Still, it was a start, and anything that made him and Sasha feel like they had some control over the situation couldn't be a bad thing.

He was lucky enough to have spare parts handy, so it only took a short while and a couple of holoprojs salvaged from Padreic's scrap piles before Ben had the carrier code readout flickering in front of him. He grinned at Sasha and tilted the slightly warped screen toward her so she could see. "It's even got the ship's serial number on it."

"Looks like some kinda space yacht," Sasha said. "I don't know that manufacturer. Y'nafit Limited?" She shrugged and sat back in her seat. "Sounds expensive."

"It would be if it's a space yacht." Ben propped his chin on his hand and scrolled through the data. "Here. I think I've got a name."

"You're kidding." Sasha scrambled out of her chair and around the table so she could peer over his shoulder. "Who is it?"

"I don't know if this is the person who sent the message, but the ship's registered with someone named Jessa Calrissian."

"The shipping company kind of Calrissian?" Sasha reached over his shoulder and tapped the screen, calling up a grainy, off-color license picture of a pretty black-haired girl. "She looks kinda young to be owning a space yacht."

"Not if her family owns a whole company." Ben peered at the picture for a moment. Sasha was right; Jessa Calrissian didn't look any older than he was. Despite the quality of the license picture, and despite the fact that she was only wearing a simple hairclip to pull her long braids out of her face, she had the poised look rich people had sometimes - of someone who was used to getting their way. He wondered if she was the one who had sent the message. Had she been attacked or ambushed over Draco's Well, or was she somewhere on one of the wealthy Core worlds, waiting to find out exactly what had happened to her ship? For her sake, he hoped it was the latter.

"It's not a very good secret message," Sasha said as he pocketed the data chip and began to carefully disassemble the holoprojs. "I mean, you'd think that a Rebel would know better than to leave the carrier code in."

"We don't know that it's a Rebel message," Ben said, although without nearly as much conviction as before. "And think about it for a second. If you're in the middle of a battle, are you going to take the time to erase a carrier code?"

"I'd take it off before any battles happened."

Ben stopped disconnecting uplink cables long enough to blink up at her. "Where did you learn about secret messages, anyway?"

She mumbled something that might have been "_Thunder T.I.E.s._"

"I knew it."

Sasha graciously waited until he'd replaced the assorted holoprojecs before she threw a cup at him.

* * *

Han Solo's bar of choice was dank and smelled like some kind of suspicious fungus. It was also extremely crowded. There seemed to be entire portions of Mos Espa's population that only emerged in the afternoon, stumbling upright just long enough to find the nearest drug and then passing out in a heap on an inevitably sticky floor. Hal picked his way over a couple of the prone bodies and hoped like hell that whatever he was stepping in was just a few spilled drinks as he elbowed his way through the crowd. It would have been fairly to disperse them with a well-chosen illusion, but he had taken enough chances just using the Force to find his captain.

Still, he knew Han well enough to angle for the darkest corner of the bar. He found him sitting at a grimy booth with one arm absently slung over the backrest, staring at a foul-looking drink that, remarkably enough, seemed untouched.

"We've got a new job," his captain said without bothering to look up at Hal. "Passengers. Shouldn't be too hard."

Hal slid into the booth and ducked his head low – stupid, but he wasn't taking any chances with an Imp cruiser in orbit. "I thought we didn't take passengers."

"Yeah, well." Han shrugged. "I got a favor called in."

Even without the Force, Hal would have known there was more to it than that. The lines etched into Han's face were even more pronounced than usual, and there was something about his expression – something that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite despair either – that he only seemed to get when the Imps were around.

Which meant asking for more details was out of the question. Hal settled for propping his chin on one hand and frowning at a point over Han's shoulder, keeping what he thought of as a mental ear open for anything unusual. "What kind of passengers?"

"Dumb kids. Pair of cousins." Han grimaced and reached for his drink as he spoke, but then seemed to think better of it and withdrew his hand. "We just gotta drop them off, and then we can get back to the cargo runs."

Hal sighed. Getting information out of his captain was damn near impossible sometimes. "Mel says the Imps took out two settlements last night," he said absently, as if discussing the weather.

If he hadn't known Han for so long, he would have missed the telltale flicker that passed across his face. "I heard."

"These wouldn't be a pair of dumb _settler_ kids, would they?"

Han's mouth twitched into a humorless smile. "You have to ask?"

Of course he didn't. Damn it. Hal leaned further forward and lowered his voice. "We can't do this job."

"I already took it."

"Then give it back. There's – " How was he supposed to explain this to someone so Force-deaf? "There's something wrong here. This planet's felt off ever since we landed, and it just keeps getting worse. It's like we're about to fly into an ambush, Han."

Han just raised an eyebrow at him. "You sure it's not just the stormtroopers tearing up the place?"

"No," he admitted, "I'm not, but I don't think it matters. I felt a presence here on the planet just now. Not Rage," he added when Han shifted fractionally, as if reaching for his blaster. "It's someone else – and it's strong."

"'Course it is," Han muttered. He reached up with one hand and scrubbed at his face. "We're taking the job. I can't change that, so don't get jumpy on me."

"I'd feel better if you came back to the ship with me," Hal said. "Mel's wondering where you are."

"Mel's three seconds from taking the ship and marooning us both," Han corrected, but Hal's blatant lie had the desired effect. He levered himself out of his seat, an exhausted-looking, grizzled man with stubble on his face and an age-old spice stain on his shirt. "You're too damn worried all the time."

"Someone needs to be. I've got a bad feeling about this."

Han shook his head, wincing at what had to be the beginning of an impressive headache. "You'll be all right."

Coming from his captain, that was practically a grin and a hearty slap on the shoulder – and maybe it would have cheered Hal up if the sense of dread hadn't suddenly loomed up stronger than ever, determined to choke him.

* * *

Ben had only just finished carefully replacing the last holoproj when Padreic came hobbling home. He stopped in the doorway for a moment, staring at both cousins as if he had never seen anything quite like them before, and then made his way to one of the mismatched chairs. "You two should be asleep."

"We didn't want to take your cot," Ben said, which he supposed was technically true. He certainly wasn't about to explain the carrier code and the Calrissian girl.

"Fair enough." Padreic eased himself into the chair and leaned his cane against the table, his hands folded in his lap. "I've arranged for your transport off world. I trust Captain Solo and his crew to look after you."

Ben heard Sasha gasp behind him, but pushed both that and the nagging suspicion that he ought to know that name out of his head for the time being. "We're not going off world."

Padreic scowled at him. "You are as soon as the Empire takes more of an interest in you than it already has. It's what your uncle would want me to do."

"Can't we just stay with our great-aunt?" Sasha asked. She sounded annoyed – and really, with all the sudden out-of-nowhere changes Padreic had pulled on them, Ben couldn't exactly blame her.

"When the Empire decides to come after you – and it will, with far more than just one garrison – it will never leave you alone." Padreic's voice was very quiet and his eyes never left Ben's face. "I know you found a message of some kind. Don't look at me like that," he added when Sasha opened her mouth, although he didn't glance back at her. "I know Imperial search-and-contain procedures when I see them. I don't know what information you saw. I don't care either, but the Empire does. Even they don't destroy two settlements on a whim."

Ben reached into his pocket and curled his fingers around the data chip, which suddenly seemed like the heaviest thing in the universe. "What if I just gave it back to them?"

"You _can't_," Sasha snapped. "You already said so."

"She's right," Padreic said. "The Empire would eliminate you and likely Sasha as well, to remove all possible witnesses. The only reason your uncle is still alive is because he might know what became of that message. Even if you're just arrested, you will draw the Emperor's attention – and when that happens, he will destroy you."

For a second Ben couldn't even form words. "The _Emperor?_" he finally managed to choke out. If the rest of the situation hadn't been so serious, he would have laughed.

Sasha folded her arms, just like Aunt Olivea had when she'd caught one of the settlement's children in a blatant lie. "Of _course_ we're gonna get the Emperor's attention – but it's 'cause of who you picked to take us off world, not 'cause of this message."

Padreic's smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Your father's told you stories."

"Sasha?" Between Padreic talking about the Emperor being interested in him and Sasha bringing up – well, he wasn't sure _what_ she was bringing up – Ben felt as if there was an entirely separate conversation happening just out of earshot. "What are you talking about?"

His cousin made a face at him. "Just 'cause you never liked Dad's stories doesn't mean there isn't lots of true stuff in them. You know the one he tells us about Luke Skywalker, right?"

"You mean the one about Darth Rage? I guess." And he did know it, sort of. Uncle Gavin's stories hadn't been like the ones other parents in Draco's Well told their children. In Uncle Gavin's stories, Old Kenobi was a wise hermit instead of a vengeful ghost, and Skywalker's sudden, inexplicable defection to the Empire was something more akin to a personal betrayal than a simple, inevitable fact. Ben had always privately thought that Uncle Gavin took the Skywalker story a little too close to heart, and so he had never really listened to it once he was old enough to tinker with things.

But Sasha had. Uncle Gavin's stories were the only things she knew better than her beloved _Thunder T.I.E.s_ episodes. She rounded on Padreic triumphantly, eyes narrowed and jaw set. "Captain Solo was one of Darth Rage's old Rebel friends. He's wanted in lots of systems, and if the Empire finds us with him, then they'll think we're just as bad as he is."

Padreic didn't seem at all surprised. "And how do you know this is the same Captain Solo?"

"'Cause if he's wanted all over Imp space, no one else is gonna be stupid enough to use his name." She stopped for a moment, head tilted to one side. "Why's _he_ using it?"

"His ship is registered under another name. He and I are..." Padreic hesitated, shrugging his shoulders. "We've had our disagreements, but he knows I have no reason to betray him, and he in turn will not betray either of you."

Which brought them back to what Ben felt was the important point. "Why did you say that about me and the Emperor?"

Padreic smiled up at him, and the expression was gentle and sad and made Ben's skin crawl. "Do you know why Luke Skywalker left this planet?"

"Because he wanted to?"

"He found a Rebel message, just like you."

The data chip suddenly got even heavier. "Oh."

"There's more. Darth Rage's first mentor was a Jedi, possibly one of the greatest Jedi to ever live. On Tatooine, he was known as Ben Kenobi." The smile vanished. "Your namesake, if I'm not mistaken."

Ben shook his head, as if that would somehow make his world fall back into some semblance of order. "I'm named after a Jedi?"

"Aunt Rasca named you Ben 'cause she always liked the stories about Old Kenobi," Sasha said. "Dad told me." She glared at Padreic, as if she had abruptly decided that the entire situation was somehow his fault. "What does that matter anyway? It's not as if she did it on purpose. She didn't know Old Kenobi was a Jedi. No one here does."

"But Rage does. The Emperor does. They won't care about your aunt's reasons." Padreic's shoulders slumped, and for a moment he simply stared at Ben, who could only keep shaking his head at the nonsense of it all. When the odd-jobs-man spoke again, his voice was hoarse with some unidentifiable emotion. "They are not men who can afford to believe in coincidences, Ben. Should you be identified by the garrison, it will only be a matter of time until you come to their attention. The Emperor will see you as a threat to him, just as he once saw Rage as a threat, and one way or another, he will destroy you."

"But he's not a threat to anybody!" Sasha rested a hand on Ben's arm, almost as if she wanted to reassure him that she was still there. "He couldn't hit a stranded sandcrawler with the carbine and he always flies the landspeeder too slow and – and _I'm_ more dangerous than he is!"

Padreic said nothing, which was somehow worse than any more horrible explanations. Ben leaned heavily against the wall, half-supported by Sasha, and covered his face with shaking hands. He wanted very much to tell the odd-jobs-man how stupid the entire conversation had just sounded and how he wasn't going anywhere – how he was going to exchange the data chip for Uncle Gavin and then take them all to his great-aunt's so they could mourn properly and start rebuilding.

But he couldn't. The words wouldn't come. Some instinct told him that what Padreic had said was all too true.

"We..." Sasha's voice shook a little, but she tightened her grip on his arm. Ben hardly noticed. It was as if the past couple days had caught up with him all in one moment - all the fear and hurt that he'd pushed away so he could be the sensible practical one and keep Sasha safe - and he wasn't sure he trusted himself to stand, much less speak. "What about the lightsaber we found?"

"I don't think you should leave it with me," Padreic said softly.

"But it's a Jedi weapon, isn't it? It could get Ben in more trouble if – "

"The Emperor will expect him to have one, should he decide to search for him."

Ben lowered his hands just enough to stare at Padreic. "He'll think I'm a Jedi too? Just because of what my name is?"

"A potential Jedi, yes. Whether or not he would be right is another matter entirely, but he will believe it. That is why it is imperative that you and your message leave Tatooine the moment the garrison identifies you, with or without your uncle."

"What if they don't identify us?"

"Then we will try to free your uncle first," Padreic said, although he didn't sound very happy about that. "No matter what happens, you will both be on your way to a Rebel base by this time tomorrow." He climbed slowly to his feet, wincing as he flexed stiff fingers. "It would be best if you both got some sleep. There is another cot in the bedroom storage closet if you need it."

Ben felt that he could have said something else – maybe an apology for destroying any remaining sense of safety, or some sort of reassurance that everything would turn out all right. _Anything. _But all he did was hobble off to a far corner of the house, disappearing through what might have been a doorway or might have been just a shadow in the piles of junk, and the cousins were alone again.

"You can't be a Jedi." There was a strain in Sasha's voice, as if she was trying her best to be calm and not really succeeding. It made her seem younger than she really was. "He's full of – and you're – " She stared up at him, wide-eyed and angry and terrified. "The Imps _kill_ Jedi, Ben."

"I'm not a Jedi." He didn't have to try to keep his voice calm now, because if there was anything he was still certain about, it was that. "It'll be okay."

"Dad'll kill me if you get in trouble," she said. "You're the one who behaves." And then her watery smile dissolved and she started blotting at her eyes with her sleeve.

Ben wasn't sure why one of her old misadventures came suddenly to mind – only that he remembered how scared she had been, because even five-year-olds weren't exempt from severe punishment if they broke the vaporator. He'd sat and hugged her for a while before he'd shown her that she'd just reset it. At the time, it had been the only thing he could think of.

He wasn't ten now and this was a lot bigger than a vaporator, but he still wasn't sure what to say to her. So he put an arm around her instead and wished, desperately and uselessly, that his uncle and aunt were there to do the same for him.


	4. Chapter 4

_"__Leia Organa was a criminal and a traitor, but make no mistake, she was just as sane as you or I. It is impossible to study her actions without first understanding that she attempted to revive the order of Jedi charlatans not out of a desire for power or prestige, but out of a genuine conviction that she had been left with no alternatives. Desperation makes ordinary people do extraordinary things."_  
- Luis Vesh_, "Lecture on the Cult of the Jedi"  
_

___Captain Fantastik: Don't worry. We're not in trouble yet.  
Lieutenant Drai: We're surrounded and we're down to survival rations - pardon me, sir, but when_ are _we in trouble?  
- Captain Fantastik and the Thunder T.I.E.s_, Episode 93_, "The Pirates of Manday Prime"  
_

* * *

The Circle  
Chapter Four

* * *

The second-most-powerful being in the entire galaxy was quiet and slightly built, with a forgettable face and an easygoing smile. He wore a plain black uniform instead of long cloaks or old-fashioned armor, and his only concession to his high rank was the lightsaber hanging unobtrusively at his side. At first glance he looked harmless and almost boyish, but the men and women of the Imperial Navy had heard too many stories about him to place much stock in appearances. Darth Rage's temper, though rarely seen, was just as legendary as his soft-spoken, efficient ruthlessness.

At that moment, there was only one person on the Star Destroyer _Retaliator_ who wasn't afraid of him - and that, Rage knew, was because she was too sheltered and naive to know better.

"This is outrageous," the girl said, never mind that she was the one handcuffed, flanked by stormtroopers and forcibly seated in one of the debriefing room's hard-backed chairs. "I know a power grab when I see one. I assure you that once you buffoons decide to set me free, I'll see all of you in a court of law!"

Rage had heard all this before, ever since the _Retaliator_ had taken the girl and her ship into custody. She was, he had to admit, extremely good at sticking to a story. The standard day of sleep deprivation and the starvation rations had left her looking a little haggard, but no less willing to lie through her teeth.

At least she was entertaining. Over the course of the past decade he'd sat across from many prisoners, and he'd heard everything from pleading to defiance to clumsy attempts at bribery. This was the first time someone had threatened to sue him.

He leaned forward, folding his hands on the polished desk in front of him. "Maybe I wasn't clear," he said calmly. "You were caught transmitting classified files. That's high treason, which places you under the Imperial Navy's jurisdiction."

"Of course it does," the girl muttered, although she didn't quite meet his eyes.

"Anything I choose to do to you is perfectly legal," he continued as if she hadn't spoken. He smiled, well aware that the expression was patient and long-suffering and, in its own way, truly terrifying. "If I wanted to throw you in an airlock and subject you to slow decompression, for example, no one would object."

She had exceptional self-control. Except for a slight widening of her eyes, there was no sign of the terror he felt rippling through the Force. "There's no need for threats," she said, although there was the faintest tremor in her voice. "I'm sure we can work this out like civilized beings."

"There is nothing to work out. You are to be taken to a detention center, interrogated, and executed for treason."

"That's ridiculous! My father will never – "

Ah. There it was. Rage held out his hand and waited until his assistant stepped forward and handed him a prepared datapad. "Your father. That would be Lando Calrissian of Calrissian Shipping, yes?"

She nodded stiffly.

"The same father who disowned you last year?" He glanced at the datapad, although there was really no need. "It was over a contract with the Empire, wasn't it? Something about weapons shipments?" He smiled again, although there was no humor behind it. "I've met your father. He's a smart man. Do you really think he would jeopardize his entire company just to save one Rebel agent?"

He waited, but the girl stared down at her clenched hands and said nothing. If he hadn't been so practiced at reading people, he would have missed the fact that her shoulders were starting to shake.

His smile vanished as he handed the datapad back, his gaze never leaving his prisoner. "We've searched and destroyed both of the settlements in your broadcast range. There's no point in lying to me. Who gave you those files? What was in them? Where did you send them?"

She lifted her head and stared at a fixed point over his shoulder. "I don't know."

"You risked your life to protect them. Do you think I'm going to believe you don't know what they were?" When she said nothing, Rage sighed and gestured to the stormtroopers flanking her. It was clear that her much-lauded civilized approach wasn't going to get him anywhere. "Take her back to the detention bay."

Almost before she had been escorted out of the room, his assistant stepped forward with another datapad in hand. "We've compiled a list of probable settlers, my lord. Only probable – the records aren't always reliable."

Rage nodded for her to follow him as he walked out of the debriefing room. "What did you find?"

"Very little." She didn't look up from her datapad as she navigated the corridors, but she never once needed to glance up to find her footing or to avoid passing officers and crewmen. Even on the polished metal decks, her boots made no sound. "The Mos Espa garrison has taken a man named Gavin Darklighter into custody. He and his wife resisted attempts to enter their home, and he appears to be the only owner of a holoprojector in either of the targeted settlements."

For a moment Rage wondered why he wasn't surprised that a Darklighter was involved somehow. "Has he revealed anything?"

"Nothing yet, my lord. An first-response team is scheduled to arrive at the garrison in shortly. Based on their findings, we will have a fully debriefed interrogation team en route by midday tomorrow." She sidestepped a pair of blue-suited maintenance technicians and stepped over a small droid. "There is some evidence that Darklighter had children who have thus far managed to elude our search teams. Patrol TX-194 reports finding a disassembled water vaporator registered with Darklighter not far from the settlement, and the family's landspeeder is missing."

Rage nodded. Regardless of whether or not Calrissian's transmission had been an act of desperation, the information she had stolen was heavily classified and should have been for the Emperor's eyes only. Even he, Palpatine's personal representative, did not know its contents. Leaving potential witnesses alive was out of the question – especially on Tatooine, which seemed to produce more than its fair share of troublemakers. If Biggs' extended family was involved somehow, the transmission would almost certainly find its way into the Rebellion's hands.

"Do these children have names?" he asked.

"No, my lord, but they do have faces." Yet another datapad materialized "This was taken from a holo found in the wife's belongings. The search teams believe these individuals may be the fugitives we're looking for."

He accepted the datapad without glancing at it. "Distribute copies to the teams and have them expand their search to the spaceports – house by house, Lieutenant. Instruct them to use whatever means they deem necessary. I want those files found."

"And Calrissian?"

At least he didn't have to worry about tracking that particular problem down. "Have an interrogation droid prepared."

"My lord." She bowed at the waist, turned crisply on her heel, and disappeared down a side corridor. For the time being, Rage was alone.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting when he glanced down at the picture of the fugitives. Maybe versions of Biggs, dark hair and mustache and all. Instead a girl with a sun-bleached braid beamed up at him, her waving arms all but obscuring a round-faced, patient-looking older boy with dark red hair. Neither of them looked any older than he had been when he had first left Tatooine. The girl especially was little more than a child.

They were perhaps the least likely Rebels he had ever seen – if that was indeed what they were.

His assistant had been nothing if not thorough. The datapad contained bits and pieces of information, everything Tatooine's haphazard records could reveal about the family. In this particular case, it hadn't been very much at all. Gavin Darklighter's settlement had made Anchorhead look like a bustling metropolis, and its inhabitants were suspicious of and close-mouthed around outsiders, even when questioned at the end of blaster rifles. Nonetheless, the carefully cobbled-together data indicated that the family had made supply purchases consistent with the needs of four people. Whoever the boy and girl were, they had been living in one of the targeted settlements – and somehow, apparently without any outside help, they had thus far eluded the finest search teams in the Empire.

Rage frowned down at the picture again, particularly at the boy, who was probably the one behind the escape simply by virtue of being so much older than his companion. Perhaps he had wanted to leave his settlement and his planet behind and had ill-advisedly seized on Calrissian's message as a way out. Perhaps he had been part of a fledgling Rebel cell out of some misguided attempt to imitate his famous relative.

Or perhaps the boy had simply panicked at the sight of Imperial stormtroopers and ran, taking his sister along with him. Tatooine wasn't a Core world. Who knew what kind of stories he had heard about the Empire?

_True stories_, some part of Rage's mind answered. He ignored it with practiced ease.

He shut the datapad off and tucked it under an arm, attempting to put the young fugitives out of his head. Something about all of this was making him uneasy – a ripple in the Force, part presence and part premonition, which seemed to slip from his grasp every time he reached for it. He tried to push the feeling away. The boy and girl could not elude the search teams forever, and when they were found his lingering questions about them would be answered.

The sooner the Empire was done with this planet, the better.

* * *

Han Solo made a habit of sleeping in his cockpit. It was probably some kind of survival skill – an unconscious way of keeping his head on his shoulders for another day – but after so many years, he'd decided it was pretty damn comfortable, too. There was something quiet and reassuring about the blinking readouts and the faint thrum of the power supply. It was a constant. He was used to it.

"Kriffing whoreson of a three-faced mother-loving – _frag!_"

Even if it was hard to get a good night's sleep in it.

Han sighed and didn't bother to open his eyes, much less move his feet off the controls. He knew that sooner or later his gunner would probably come marching in to tell him exactly what she was upset about, and in the meantime he would just have to wonder where she'd picked up that vocabulary. There was no rest to be had until she was done, at any rate. Whatever else she lacked, she made up for it with a healthy set of lungs.

A few moments later someone stomped into the cockpit and settled into the copilot's seat – someone who was far too quiet to be Melody. Han deigned to crack an eye open and glanced over long enough to see Hal frowning out the viewport, his chin propped on one fisted hand.

"Not much of a view," he said idly. "You've seen one docking bay wall, you've seen 'em all."

Hal's mouth twisted. "This one's worse than usual." Then, with more feeling, "I _hate_ this planet."

"Yeah, I noticed." Han wasn't too fond of it himself, but he didn't feel like elaborating and his copilot knew better than to ask.

Not that that stopped Hal from bringing up other things. "We're not getting paid for these passengers, are we." It wasn't a question.

Han shrugged. "Like I said, I got a favor called in."

"A favor's running an extra crate for no charge. Han, this is _insane_."

At least they agreed on something. "What'd Mel break this time?"

"Don't change the subject."

Han looked at him – really looked this time – and then immediately wished he hadn't. Hal didn't look old, exactly, but he was getting the aged expression that Jedi seemed to acquire far too quickly. Kenobi'd had it. So had Leia near the end, and so had some of her apprentices. He was pretty damn sure his son had it by now.

Somewhere along the line he'd come to associate it with bounty notices and betrayals and messy deaths. Seeing it on Hal's face made him start to wonder how long the boy would last against Rage, and thinking like that made him want to slink somewhere safe and dark and never come out.

Maybe Hal sensed some of that, because he quickly turned his gaze back to the viewport. "Mel fried the lateral controls."

Just like that, they were back on safe ground. Han ran a hand down his face and wondered why he put up with this kind of crew. "I don't want her near the nav systems."

"I tried to keep her away." Hal sounded long-suffering, but for someone who was usually so good at concealing his emotions, he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding a fond, soft smile.

Han decided not to mutter about lovesick idiots. He didn't need his copilot being defensive and insulted on top of everything else. "You get her away from those systems. I mean it. I don't want another Nar Shaddaa incident."

"It wasn't _that_ big of an explosion and it's not my fault the jailers didn't speak – "

"_Hal._"

He held up his hands. "Artoo already took it away from her. I swear."

That explained the profanity, anyway. "So we'll be ready for takeoff?"

"Just as soon as these passengers of yours show up, yeah." He shifted in his seat, his fingers lacing and unlacing behind his head. "Is one of them the presence I felt before?"

"I don't know," Han said, and in a very real way he was telling the truth. He knew next to nothing about the Force, other than the fact that he'd never seen a thing to indicate it was light or good or whatever the Jedi had called it. But he knew plenty about hiding people from it, so he stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts, listening to the reassuring thrum of the backup systems and the familiar sounds of Melody calling a certain astromech droid's parentage into question. "Look," he said at last, "I don't want you doing anything stupid – but let me know if you feel that presence again. Could be trouble."

Hal's smile was thin and tired. "I've already got an ear open."

Han nodded and closed his eyes, although there was little point in trying to get any sleep now. He'd seen enough of that too-old, haunted expression on too many people's faces. He had no desire to watch it sneak back and ghost across Hal's.

* * *

Ben woke up with his heart racing, half-expecting to hear Imps breaking down the front door and to see blaster barrels pointed down at him. His dream – a terrifying hodgepodge of screaming giants and gleaming broken machines and a not-quite-familiar woman with dark braided hair – splintered and vanished with one last stomach-twisting stab of dread. For a moment the woman's urgent whispers almost drowned out the sound of his shallow breaths, but it was as if he were hearing her through a tunnel, and her echoing words tumbled into each other until they were incomprehensible.

Then she was gone too, and all that was left was a sick, undirected sense of overpowering fear. Ben squeezed his eyes shut and reminded himself of all the little details he had to take care of, like cleaning the carbine and sorting through the emergency kit. Only when the feeling of imminent danger had faded to a sort of dull, ever-present worry did he lift his head.

As soon as he did, he felt incredibly stupid. He was in Padreic's cramped, cluttered bedroom, stretched out on a dusty cot that probably hadn't been used in years, if not decades. The machines here were tiny and old and anything but gleaming, and the only sounds were the distant whine of landspeeders and Sasha's soft snores. There was certainly no strange whispering woman.

_It's cold_. He pushed himself up, barely suppressing a shiver, and began to fumble for his boots. _Why is it so cold in here?_

At least he knew how to handle a malfunctioning cooling system. In fact, he knew four different ways of repairing one – six if temporary patch-jobs counted, and maybe more if he were given enough time and a few extra tools. He ran through all of them as he picked his way around Padreic's scrap piles toward the bedroom door. He liked machines, even broken ones. They didn't have strange messages or funny stories mucking things up.

Just then he almost envied them.

The main room was no warmer. If anything, it was so cold that Ben wished he'd taken the blanket from his cot. There was no light except for the faint blue-green glow given off by the half-repaired holoprojs. They backlit Padreic, who was sitting in one of the mismatched chairs with his hands clasped in front of him and his face shadowed by the cowl of his long brown robe. If he noticed the chill, he didn't seem very concerned about it.

"You're up early," he said without lifting his head.

Ben folded his arms in front of him, elbows cupped against his palms, and gingerly stepped out of the shadows. "Your cooling system isn't working right. I thought maybe – "

"It's fine."

"It's freezing," he said as politely as he could.

Padreic shifted in his seat. "To you, perhaps. The cooling system is fine."

"Then why is it so _cold_ in here?"

"Did you know your uncle was a pilot?"

Ben stared at him, thrown by the sudden change of topic. What did that have to do with anything? He shook his head, trying and failing to picture Uncle Gavin flying anything bigger than a landspeeder. "He was?"

"Years ago, before the Empire sank its claws into the Outer Rim. He was restless," he added softly. "Very restless."

Yet again, Ben completely failed to picture his uncle as anything but down-to-earth. For a moment he wondered if maybe Padreic was talking about someone else entirely, but then he remembered Sasha and supposed her attitude must have come from somewhere. "If you say so."

"Your family breeds explorers, Ben – even if those explorers decide it's in their best interests to come home." The odd-jobs-man's voice was peculiar and detached, as if he wasn't really aware what he was saying. "You must feel you're the odd one out."

Ben frowned at him. "You mean because I don't want to leave Tatooine?" He decided to take Padreic's silence as a yes and shrugged. "I'll leave if it'll keep Sasha safe, but I don't think I'd be much good out there."

He felt more than saw the old man smile. "And you want to do good."

"I think I ought to, as long as I'm around. I'm no explorer."

"What are you, then?"

"A mechanic."

To his surprise, Padreic laughed – not a pleasant sound at all – and shook his head. "Of course." Then he sobered and lifted his head, and the half-light from the holoprojs threw his lined face into stark relief. "Rage is here."

"In Mos Espa?"

"Above us." His eyes glittered beneath his hood. Just for a moment, Ben couldn't tell what color they were.

The fear from before began to creep back. "How do you know?"

Given Padreic's strange, changeable mood, he had almost expected to hear some inexplicable reason – that he just _knew_, maybe. Instead the old man slowly climbed to his feet, and the sense of overwhelming wrongness shrank back to its usual vague presence in the back of Ben's mind. "The Empire should take more pains to guard their transmissions," he said. "Even their coded ones."

Ben grimaced. With the way his luck had been these past couple days, he wasn't even surprised. "They sent something about me and Sasha."

"Indeed. I would rather not explain this more than once," he added, withdrawing a small holoproj from his cloak. "Please wake your cousin."

Ben turned and hurried back into the bedroom. The nagging feeling that Padreic was losing his mind – that he hadn't really been talking about Uncle Gavin at all – faded away, forgotten, in the face of more pressing concerns.

By the time Sasha stumbled out of the bedroom, Padreic had piled Ben's toolkit and a pair of antique-looking blaster pistols onto the kitchen counter. All of the holoprojs had been shut off except the little one from his robes, which projected an enlarged, off-color image into the air above it. Ben noticed it immediately, partly because it was now the only illumination in the room – but mostly because it was of him.

"That's from Mom's holo," Sasha whispered. "Ben, what – ?"

"The Imps must've found it." He barely recognized his own voice, which sounded oddly strangled. He could picture exactly where the holo had sat on Aunt Olivea's shelf, right between the fancy Lady's Day dishes and the goblets from her mother's wedding. It was out of date – Sasha was much taller now and her braid was longer – but Ben still looked very much like himself.

Padreic looked up from his rummaging and folded his hands inside the sleeves of his long brown robe. "That is an Imperial transmission from the Star Destroyer _Retaliator_, which is currently in orbit directly over Mos Espa. Captain Solo and his crew intercepted it." He glanced at the holo for a moment, his lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. "The Imperial teams will be starting a house-to-house search here in Mos Espa – within the next quarter-chrono, I'd say. If we're very lucky, they haven't cordoned off the docking bays already."

"But – " Sasha's mouth opened and closed for a moment before she found words. "They'll come after my dad if they can't get us! We can't just leave him!"

"I will do what I can for your father." Padreic scooped up the blaster pistols. "I hope you will never need these," he said as he thrust the weapons at them, "but if you ever do, they are much more powerful than your carbine. And Ben," he added, extracting the lightsaber from the toolkit. "I would keep this as well."

Ben fumbled with the weapons and nearly dropped both of them before he managed to attach them both to his belt. Then he sealed up the toolkit and clipped it on too, as much for its familiar weight as for any possible use it could have. "Where are we going to go? You said something about a Rebel base, but we can't - "

"I'm sure you can work that out with Captain Solo." Padreic waited patiently until Sasha had finished buckling her blaster on and then looked from one cousin to the other. "You can trust him and his crew, but do not place your lives in the hands of anyone or anything else." He seemed about to add something, but sighed instead, his gaze locked on Ben. "I need you to promise me something, for your uncle's sake."

Ben tried to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. "I promised him I wouldn't do anything stupid, if that's what you mean."

"That isn't what I had in mind," Padreic said, although the corners of his mouth twitched. "Promise me that your uncle will know you the next time he sees you."

What kind of demand was that? "I'm not going to turn into a krayt dragon or anything." The odd-jobs-man's face clouded over, so he sighed and stared at his scuffed boots. "I promise Uncle Gavin will know who I am."

Padreic didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded and gestured to the front door. "This way, both of you – and do try to be quiet. We have patrols to avoid."

* * *

In the dim grey light Mos Espa's streets seemed larger and more foreboding than before. They were also far less crowded. Ben kept close to Sasha and tried not to stare too hard at the tough-looking, very clearly armed beings who scowled at him as he hurried past. He wished they could have taken the landspeeder, but Padreic had refused to reveal where or even how he had hidden it. The old man thought it would be more noticeable or more likely to be searched by Imp patrols – and he was probably right, but that didn't make Ben any happier about walking.

The streets grew wider and more crowded as they drew closer to the center of the spaceport and as the sky brightened. Ben kept track of Sasha by the simple means of grabbing her braid when she started to get too far ahead of him. Spotting Padreic wasn't as much of a problem; his distinctive hobble-walk was hard to miss no matter how many people Ben had to maneuver around, and he was so tall that his white-haired head poked out of the crowd.

"Do you think we're ever gonna see Dad again?" Sasha asked, her voice hushed and barely audible over the noise.

Ben wanted to tell her that of course they would, because he was Uncle Gavin and he was too sensible and careful to just disappear – but that hadn't saved Aunt Olivea, now had it? "Padreic will try and help him."

"I thought you didn't trust Padreic."

"I trust him more than the Imps," he said, which seemed to be all that mattered at the moment. He didn't have time to wonder if Padreic really had been hired by the Anchorhead Darklighters – an idea that seemed less and less likely as time went on – and why he was so willing to risk his life to save two settlers he barely knew and certainly wasn't friends with. Whatever his reasons, the odd-jobs-man really was trying to help them. Of that Ben was absolutely sure. He just didn't feel smart enough or awake enough to work out the whys of it.

"Do you think he knew your dad?" Sasha asked suddenly.

He stopped mid-fret and stared at her. "What?"

"Padreic, I mean. Do you think he knew him?"

Where in the galaxy had _that_ idea come from? "Of course not. Why would he?"

"He knows lots about you, Ben – and I know you're gonna say it's 'cause he visited Draco's Well," she added when the obvious retort sprang to mind, "but I don't think that's it. Where'd he find out about all that stuff about Old Kenobi?"

If they hadn't been in the middle of wading through early-morning market crowds, Ben might have stopped and found a wall to bang his head on. "Maybe because he's old too? They probably traded scrap or something."

"But he was talking about – you know." Ben decided she probably meant the Emperor and Darth Rage, but he didn't have time to ask her, because she was still whispering with barely a pause for breath. "And – and he told you all that stuff about trouble you could get into."

"...and?"

She leaned closer and dropped her voice so low that he almost couldn't hear her. "And maybe it's 'cause your dad was a Jedi."

Right. That did it. "He was not!"

"Says who?"

"Says everyone! He was a smuggler or something!"

"But if he _was_ a Jedi, he wouldn't go telling everyone, now would he?"

Feeling very put-upon, Ben grabbed Sasha's arm and steered her along, trying to catch up with Padreic. He ducked his head a little as he spoke and wished he wouldn't feel guilty if he swatted her upside the head. "Look, I don't care _what_ my father was. He could be the lost king of Corellia for all I care. He's not here and Uncle Gavin is, so maybe that's who you should worry about."

He got such an angry look in return that he almost let go of her arm. "I _am_ worried about Dad!"

"Then why are you thinking about my father so much?"

"'Cause maybe I'm worried about you too!"

His irritation vanished, replaced by gnawing guilt – but before he could apologize, Padreic stopped short and gestured. Ben changed his attempted apology into a quick tug around a corner, the odd-jobs-man close on his heels. All three of them waited, pressed against a wall, until an Imp patrol marched down the street in dusty white armor. Only when their clomping, rhythmic footsteps had been completely swallowed up by the buzz of the crowd did Padreic let them continue on their way.

Ben didn't feel much like talking after that. Judging by Sasha's expression, she didn't either.

By the time they reached the docking bay – a squat, ugly little building with _Republica Galactic_ scrawled on it in nearly-faded letters – Ben was sure his heart was trying to pound its way straight through his ribs. There hadn't been any other Imp patrols, but it seemed like the closer Padreic got him and Sasha to the promise of off world transport and safety, the less secure he actually felt. Worse, the prickling sensation from Hermit's Hut was back, along with the strange chill he had first felt the night the Imps had attacked Draco's Well. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting at any moment to see entire squadrons of stormtroopers converging from all directions. In fact, he was so preoccupied with this that when Padreic stopped, he almost ran into him.

"Easy there," the odd-jobs-man said calmly. He had stopped in front of one of the docking bay's unlabeled, nondescript entrances, and had rested both hands on the top of his cane. "The ship is right through this door. Captain Solo will take care of you from here."

"You're not gonna see us into the docking bay?" Sasha asked. "It could be a trap or something."

Padreic smiled, but this time it wasn't frightening at all. Instead it was almost paternal. "We each walk our own path," he said mildly – and to Ben's astonishment, he reached over and gently rested a hand on Sasha's shoulder. "Take good care of your cousin. He'll need you."

She drew herself up, squaring her shoulders and resting her hand awkwardly on her holster. "I will."

"Thank you." Padreic stepped back and inclined his head slightly, almost like he had stepped out of one of Sasha's fancier holos – a faded leftover of the Imperial Court instead of a glorified scrap dealer. "Don't look back."

Ben flashed a quick, worried smile instead of trying to puzzle out what the old man meant. He grabbed Sasha's hand and tugged her along with him, and together they pushed the heavy doors open and slipped into a hot, narrow corridor. When he glanced over his shoulder – because he had to look back, just in case – the odd-jobs-man had already disappeared into the crowd.


	5. Chapter 5

_"A true leader cannot command unquestioning loyalty. He must earn it through his good judgment, his integrity, and above all his faith in his soldiers."_  
- Jon-Win Grale, _A New Translation of the Hykari Vry Sagas,_ B'kath University Publishers, Ltd.

_"The ability to love another person more than yourself is the quickest path to the Dark Side. It is also the surest means of escaping it. Such is the nature of the Force."_  
- "Teachings of Leia Organa" (Banned: Imperial Board of Culture)

* * *

The Circle

Chapter Five

* * *

In his younger days, Darth Rage might have paced in front of his office viewports, as if sheer restless energy could coax answers from the planet he'd once called home. Even now, after hard-earned experience had more or less taught him patience, the urge to _do something_ was difficult to suppress. He wanted to be on Tatooine with the search teams or doing flyovers with the T.I.E. pilots - in other words, he wanted to be anywhere but here.

He didn't miss the Rebellion's lies and delusions, but its loose chain of command still appealed to him. Dangerously naive thought Commander Skywalker might have been, he had been able to get away with things that Lord Rage, the Emperor's right hand, could never dream of.

Rage forced himself to stop pacing and carefully turned his attention to the matter at hand. The stolen message was still out there somewhere, in the hands of enigmatic and apparently resourceful children. Despite Lieutenant Archimedes's best efforts, the serious boy and waving girl still had no names to go with their faces - along with no school reports, credit chits, criminal records, personal correspondence, census registrations, identification numbers, or hints at their motivations or personalities. As far as the galaxy was concerned, they didn't exist.

The Force said otherwise.

That was the problem, of course. It was almost impossible to see the future in the Force - it came in bits and pieces, more impressions than concrete facts, and had the unfortunate habit of being a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway - but when he tried to find clues now, all he found was a swirling current of confusing images and sounds, from names he should have forgotten to faces he had never seen before. It was as if he had been put in a cockpit and launched into battle without learning how to fly.

At the center of the chaos, utterly still, was the girl and especially the boy.

It wasn't like anything Rage had ever seen before. Something important was going to happen to them or perhaps because of them, something that would impact him directly.

Damned if he knew what that something was.

He fought down the very undignified urge to punch the bulkhead in frustration.

Rage sighed and rested both hands on the back of his chair. He had no particular desire to be interrupted, but after more than a decade on his staff, his assistant knew better than to bother him for trivial matters. The fact that she was standing in front of his desk, hands clasped behind her back and shoulders squared, meant that she had found something both sensitive and extremely important. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

She stood up straighter, if that was even possible. "My lord, Intel has completed its preliminary checks on Gavin Darklighter. Per your orders, I reviewed the information personally and placed it under Gold-Four clearance."

"That high?" When she nodded stiffly – the closest she would ever come to being offended in his presence – he waved for her to continue. "Don't look at me like that. You know I trust your judgment. Go on. What did they find?"

"That Darklighter has something of a record, my lord. Nine Grade Three smuggling charges in the Mid Rim, all of them between twenty and seventeen years old, with a handful of low-level conspiracy charges thrown in for good measure."

Somehow Rage wasn't even surprised. "He's a Rebel." He didn't bother to make it a question.

"It appears that way." There was the briefest of pauses, which was practically lip-chewing hesitation coming from her. "The conspiracy charges were mostly circumstantial. He's still flagged as an accomplice in most of the Mid Rim."

Rage waited, but for once his assistant wasn't at all forthcoming. When no prompt answer appeared, he allowed a trace of irritation to creep into his voice. "I don't have time for guessing games. _Whose_ accomplice?"

She focused on a point over his shoulder and spoke flatly, like an officer about to face a firing squad for doing the right thing. "Corran Horn's, my lord. Leia Organa's apprentice."

And suddenly the strange, twisting currents in the Force made sense. Of course this all came back to Leia somehow. Of _course_. "The fugitives have ties to Organa?"

"Remotely, but – " She stopped herself. By now, she undoubtedly knew better than to tread into the tangle of emotions that accompanied any mention of Leia. She hastily amended her answer to, "Yes, my lord."

Rage scowled down at the datapad. When the picture of the boy and girl said nothing, he balled his hands into fists and turned back to the viewports, his mind racing. Leia had died many years ago, probably before the girl was even born – but her apprentice had lasted a little longer. Long enough to pass on rudimentary training to another, perhaps. More than long enough to hide future Jedi with an old Rebel acquaintance.

At least one of the fugitives was Force-sensitive. Rage was sure of it now. He could feel it.

The girl he could still save. She was young – probably too young to have received any training from Horn. He would have need of an apprentice soon anyway, and she might still be open-minded enough to see the Rebellion for what it really was. There was hope for her, if she proved to be the Force-sensitive one.

If it was the boy...

Rage sighed. The boy was old enough to have been trained as a Jedi since birth_. _If Leia's son was anything to go by, he was beyond all hope.

There was no helping it, then. If the Force-sensitive one was the boy, he would have to die.

Something crinkled and splintered behind him. Rage felt alarm and fear rush from his assistant, although when he turned around, she simply stared at him. Without saying a word, she dropped her gaze to look pointedly at something on his desk.

The datapad had been totally destroyed, crushed in a useless mess of sparking circuitry and shattered casing. What little was left was small enough to fit inside his fist.

With a supreme effort, he relaxed his grip on the Force. There would be more productive uses for his anger later. "You have something to add, Lieutenant?"

She regarded him with something that might have been concern, had it been directed at anyone else. "You mentioned trusting my judgment, my lord."

"Of course I do."

"Is it too much to hope that I might do the same?"

After all this time, sometimes he was still taken aback by her sheer audacity. "Don't overstep your bounds, Lieutenant."

"My apologies, my lord."

"If you were anyone else, you would be dead."

"I am aware of that, my lord. I was merely reminding you of your first order to me. Forgive me." She ducked her head in the quick, perfunctory way he had learned was less of an apology than a tactical retreat. Some days Rage was sure that she approached him the same way she approached a military exercise - like a puzzle to be solved or a scenario to be worked out through any means necessary.

That particular personality quirk had once saved countless lives. Someday it was going to kill her. It was one of the many things they had agreed on over the years.

He accepted her apology, such as it was, with a slight, curt nod. "Bring me the latest intelligence on Anakin Organa's whereabouts. Immediately."

If she was thrown by this sudden change in topic, she gave no sign. "You believe he's here?"

Rage didn't have an answer he could put into words. He knew only that if Leia's wayward son didn't already know about the fugitives, he would very soon. If capturing them forced the so-called last of the Jedi out of hiding, so much the better.

All he said was, "I gave you an order, Lieutenant."

"Yes, my lord. I'll inform Intel immediately." She bowed stiffly at the waist and turned on one heel to leave.

"Lieutenant."

One of these days he was going to figure out how anyone could slip into a perfectly respectable parade stance so quickly. "My lord?"

"Inform Captain Kraiz that I have new coordinates for him."

To her credit, she didn't ask why he wanted the _Retaliator_ to deviate from its search pattern. "You have new information?"

Rage glanced back at the viewports – at the planet he had been happy to leave behind, all those years ago – and let his anger and the Force guide his thoughts. He permitted himself a small, grim smile.

"Something like that," he said.

* * *

The docking bay's narrow corridor was filthy and poorly lit. If not for the muted sounds of Mos Espa's pedestrians outside, it would have been utterly silent. A decayed smell hung so thick in the air that in a less urgent situation, Ben might have stopped to pull his collar over his nose.

But there was no time for that – and once he saw the figure standing at the other end of the corridor, any questions about when the place had last been cleaned flew right out of his head. Instead he dropped his hand to hover awkwardly over his blaster pistol. He heard Sasha shifting behind him and quickly stepped in front of her, so that she was as protected as possible.

The girl directly in front of them was maybe his age, if not a little younger. Her long hair and large eyes were both very dark, while her tunic and trousers looked as if they had been designed by someone with a particular fondness for shiny black leather and no concept of modesty. She barely came up to his nose, easily making her the shortest human he had ever seen.

He didn't really notice any of these things, because she was also very calmly pointing a blaster pistol at his face.

"Who the frag are _you?_" she said.

Ben desperately tried to form words, but the only thing that seemed to matter was the barrel pointed right between his eyes. "I – "

The girl's glance shifted off to his left, although her blaster didn't. Almost before he could blink, a second pistol appeared in her other hand, aimed right at where he assumed Sasha was. "Hands away from the blaster, kid."

"Sasha, don't." He forced himself not to look back at his cousin, keeping his gaze locked on the girl. "My name's Ben. We're just here to get on a ship."

The girl glanced at his belt for a moment, where his toolkit and Padreic's weapons hung together. Her hands tightened on her blasters – but instead of shooting, she muttered something about spacing her captain and reholstered both pistols, one on each thigh. "You're our passengers?"

"Maybe?" Ben felt a little like he was trying to navigate Mos Espa without a map. "You don't look like Captain Solo."

"'Cause I'm not, you kriffing moron." She folded her arms across her chest, apparently perfectly at ease now. "I'm Melody. I'm Solo's gunner."

"So why'd you try to shoot us?" Sasha snapped. In other circumstances Ben might have marveled at her ability to recover from being threatened so quickly.

Melody rolled her eyes. "If I'd been trying, you'd be dead." She jerked her head somewhere behind her, where the corridor ended abruptly with a large door. "You wanna get off this rock or what?" Without waiting for a reply, she started back toward what Ben could only assume was the docking bay. She didn't seem particularly interested in whether or not either Darklighter was following her.

Both cousins did, but Ben wasn't happy about it. He didn't exactly distrust Melody – if he worked with a wanted man like Captain Solo, he'd be jittery too – but something about her made him uneasy. Maybe it was the fact that she seemed to be a little too familiar with her weapons, as if she'd used them so often that she didn't even think about them anymore.

_At least she's not Padreic,_ the ever-present rational part of his mind supplied. It was right, of course. Cranky and profane though she apparently was, Melody probably wasn't going to spring cryptic warnings on him. He doubted she would bother with him long enough to turn his life and expectations totally upside-down.

After the past couple days, that was a bizarrely comforting thought.

The docking bay proper was no better than the corridor. The ship in it was, if anything, much worse. Ben assumed it had probably been some sort of cargo tug at some point, but it had been retrofitted and repaired and tinkered with so many times that it didn't look spaceworthy at all. He would have worried about crashing in it if he wasn't so sure that it wouldn't be able to get off the ground in the first place.

"It looks like Jawas put it together," Sasha said. After a cursory examination, she amended that to, "_Blind_ Jawas."

Ben wanted to correct her – Jawas actually made their sandcrawlers _go_, after all – but then something he had mistaken for a warped sensor array shifted precariously and dropped to the ground with a loud_clank_. It was a landing ramp. At least he hoped it was a landing ramp. Otherwise parts of the ship were falling off, which was a possibility he didn't even want to consider.

That was the problem with being a mechanic, he decided. He hadn't even seen all of the ship yet, but he'd already come up with six ways it could kill him. After a moment's thought, he hastily added "squished by falling equipment" to the top of his growing list.

A tall young man with finger-combed hair hurried down the landing ramp, not even sparing Ben and Sasha a cursory glance as he waved towards Melody. "Why the hell isn't your comlink on?"

"So the Imps can't eavesdrop," Melody snapped back. "Who spiked your caf anyway? Calm down!"

The man shook his head. "The Imp cruiser just changed course. It's headed for a holding pattern over Mos Espa – point one-eight if we're lucky."

Ben had no idea what any of this meant, but Melody just swore viciously and shoved him right in the small of his back. "Hal, if this is your fault – "

"It's not," the man said, but before Ben could ask what they were talking about, Melody pushed him through the hatch and yanked Sasha after them both. The man – Hal, Ben supposed – brought up the rear, slamming his palm against some sort of jury-rigged control panel. "Get them settled. We're taking off."

"Settled _where?_" Melody muttered, but Hal had already disappeared down one of the ship's twisting corridors. After a moment, she scrubbed her face with one hand. "Fraggit."

"Don't you have a place for passengers?" Ben asked. He'd spotted the loose wires and open maintenance hatches scattered all over this particular corridor, prompting him to add "spontaneous decompression" and "big hot fire" to his list.

Melody scowled at him. "Does this look like a ferry?"

"It looks like a piece of scrap," Sasha said in what she probably thought was a whisper.

"Cram it or I'll tie you to the landing gear." Melody sighed and seemed to get a grip on herself. "Just follow me to the cockpit. Touch anything and I'll rip your arms off."

Ben wondered why she was looking right at him. After all, Sasha was the one who hadn't been able to keep her comments to herself. "We won't. Promise."

She didn't seem inclined to dignify that with an answer. Instead she just waved for them to follow her. At the same time, the deck began to rumble alarmingly. Something towards the back of the ship made a noise like a squashed bantha, and there was a disorienting moment of horrible weightlessness before gravity reasserted itself.

"What _was_ that?" Sasha asked. She was probably trying to sound annoyed, but all that came out was a rather frightened squeak.

Melody grinned, or at least showed all her teeth. "We just took off. The grav systems are a little fragged. Nothing to worry about."

Ben added "flattened like a sunbug" to his mental list and decided right then and there that he would never voluntarily set foot on a ship ever again. If there was anything positive to be gained from this whole mess, it was the knowledge that he _really_ didn't like flying.

He had to count his blessings somewhere, he supposed.

The ship's tiny, crowded cockpit looked as if it had been designed for one very small pilot, but somehow two seats and a host of extra equipment had been crammed in as well, making it almost impossible to maneuver. Despite this, Melody squeezed in with practiced ease and gestured impatiently for them to follow. "Where'd the Imps go?"

"Right over us," Hal said grimly. He was settled in what was probably the copilot's seat and seemed more interested in the viewport than in his passengers. Outside the ship, the sky was rapidly fading from blue to purple to star-sprinkled black – and maybe if Ben hadn't been so worried, he would have thought it was a beautiful sight. As the moment, all it did was make him feel queasy.

Melody slipped around what looked like a half-assembled sensor array and positioned herself behind Hal's chair. Her hands gripped his headrest so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "Rage, right?"

For a second Hal didn't say anything. "We can jump once we're clear of the gravity well, but..." He trailed off, shaking his head. When Melody balled one hand into a fist and punched the back of his chair, he didn't even seem to notice.

Then the man in the pilot's seat shifted long enough to run his hands over a set of nondescript controls, and Ben realized that he had almost forgotten there was another person in the cockpit. He was grizzled and graying and he hadn't shaved in a long time – and it was as if everyone else had stopped whatever they were doing to look at him.

"We're making a blind jump," he said, glancing from one face to the next as if this meant something significant. From the way Hal's jaw set and Melody muttered something obscene, it probably did. "Don't bother with the fancy stuff. Just clear the big hazards and go."

Hal looked as if he wanted to argue, but all he did was look up at Melody. "You ready?" he asked softly. "Just in case?"

Her voice was so quiet that Ben was sure she hadn't planned on anyone else overhearing. "Always will be."

"Right." Hal turned back to the viewports and his consoles. "I've got a target, Han. Just keep us out of the tractor beam for a couple minutes. That's all I need."

"That's all you'll get," Captain Solo muttered. "We've got company."

Almost before the words left his mouth, a sharp-edged wide corner appeared at the edge of the viewport. It grew longer and wider with each passing moment, turning in a slow, graceful arc until its entire length came into view. It was enormous – bigger than the largest ship Ben had ever imagined – and made of protrusions and stark lines and _presence_. He could only imagine how pathetically small Captain Solo's little ship looked beside it.

How could anyone, even a famous Rebel, fight something big enough to blot out the suns?

"They're not shooting yet." Sasha's voice thrummed with poorly-hidden panic and seemed to come from very far away. "They've got a Star Destroyer! Why aren't they _shooting?_"

"Because they want you two alive." Melody was still directly behind Hal's chair, so that she was a dark shape silhouetted against the Imp ship. "They're trying to blockade us and herd us into tractor range. That's why we've gotta make the blind jump first."

Ben had to ask. "What's a blind jump?"

"Random coordinates." She looked over her shoulder long enough to smile again, bright and dangerous like a holovid monster. "We get lucky, we'll land in the middle of a star."

_Oh_. "And if we aren't lucky?"

This time all she did was rest her hand on one of her blasters. "Then the Imps grab us first."

For a moment he could only stare at her, because they were off the planet and they should have been _safe_ – and then Padreic's warning came rushing back to him, crushing down on him like a weight. "They can't catch us!"

"They won't," Captain Solo said, quiet and grim. "Not without a fight. I'll give us cover fire. Just sit tight."

Ben shivered and pressed his back against the bulkhead, hugging himself against a sudden chill. The cockpit was silent except for the beep-whirring machinery and the not-quite-sounds of Captain Solo and Hal wrestling with the controls. That was what scared him more than anything – the lack of noise, where on Tatooine there would have been wind and sand in his face. The giant cruiser outside the viewports ducked and lurched and sometimes lit up with flashes that had to be blaster fire. That was the only sign Ben had that they were all fighting for their lives.

He shut his eyes against the sight. The Imp ship scared him in a way that he didn't understand. It was dark and cold and grasping, as if there was an icy claw was trying to wrap itself around his heart.

"_You will draw the Emperor's attention,"_ Padreic's voice whispered in his head. "_He will destroy you."_

For the first time, Ben wondered if the odd-jobs-man hadn't been warning him at all – if he had just been stating a simple, unavoidable fact.

_I don't want to die!_

Sasha caught his hand and tugged on it. When he opened his eyes, he saw her pointing at a red light flashing on Hal's console. "What's that mean?"

"That we're clear of the grav well!" Melody crowed. Her voice echoed in the cockpit, but she was so busy clapping Hal's shoulder that she didn't seem to notice.

"Don't start celebrating yet," Captain Solo muttered, but the strange, deathly silence seemed to have left the cockpit. "Here goes nothing."

He yanked on a lever of some kind. The ship shuddered and lurched and bobbed alarmingly. Through the viewports, Ben could see the Star Destroyer elongate, stretching from a wedge to a line as the stars behind it began to stream and twist. There was a sound of screeching metal, as if something was trying to tear the cockpit in half, and then everything outside the ship vanished in a kaleidoscope of colors and light.

Captain Solo glanced around the cockpit, almost like he wanted to reassure himself that everyone was still in one piece. Then he eased the lever back into position.

They didn't reappear inside a star, or stuck halfway through an asteroid, or any of the hundred other things Ben had imagined could possibly go wrong. Instead the only thing he saw through the viewport was the distant curve of a planet, complete with more star-speckled black and – more importantly – no Imps whatsoever. The Star Destroyer was gone, and the horrible crushing cold seemed to have vanished with it.

"Holy kriffing _hell_," Melody whispered. "We did it!"

"Doesn't matter if we landed in Imp space," Sasha said. "Where are we?"

Hal grinned at her. "The Ludlii mining system. Not an Imp in sight. We're clear." He looked like he wanted to add something else, but then Melody gave a strangled, relieved laugh and wrapped her arms around him. After a moment, he abandoned his controls long enough to rest his hands over hers, murmuring something that Ben couldn't quite catch.

He wondered what they were so happy about – but then he caught sight of Captain Solo, who was watching the whole exchange with bleak eyes and a set jaw, and realized that he didn't want to know.

"Are we really safe?" he asked.

Captain Solo frowned at him. "For now." He shook his head slightly, as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with the whole situation, much less with passengers. "There's a spaceport here. We're gonna have to set down for repairs."

He could only imagine what the engines looked like. "I can help. A little, I mean. I'm a – "

"You fix things. I heard." The captain's expression softened. "Here," he said, climbing out of his chair. "I'll show you where the living quarters are. Hal can land the ship."

Ben just nodded. "Sasha?"

His cousin shook her head. "I wanna see how the controls work. Just in case."

He almost dragged her along anyway – the very last thing he wanted was to be alone with Captain Solo – but of course she was right. One of them ought to know how the controls worked, and she had always been the better pilot. "Don't break anything," he said instead, and hastily followed Captain Solo out of the cockpit before she decided to throw something at him.

* * *

One of Han's better-known qualities was his ability to adapt to situations as the need arose. Admittedly he didn't always adapt _well_, as Leia and Chewie had often pointed out, but he was good at making do. He could think on his feet. That, more than anything else, was what had kept him alive.

And he had no idea what to do with Ben Darklighter.

In some ways the kid was exactly what he had expected – sheltered, naïve, exactly like another farmboy he'd run into a long time ago – but after that the similarities ended. Ben was _quiet_. He didn't seem confrontational, nor did he strike Han as terribly eager to be offworld in the first place. Instead of trying to explore the ship, he trudged along a few feet behind, examining the bulkheads and maintenance hatches with an air of anxious disapproval.

"What's its name?" he asked suddenly.

Han blinked at him. "What?"

"The ship," Ben said. "Unless you don't want to tell me. I guess it could be a secret or something." He was all apologies and worry, his hands jammed in his pockets and his gaze slipping away from Han's.

_You've got no idea what this is about, do you, kid?_

He pushed the bleak thought away. "This is the _Icarus_. Best gunrunner in the Outer Rim."

"It's very nice," Ben said, although his expression suggested that he thought nothing of the sort. He had the most open face Han had ever seen – and why wouldn't he, growing up on a backwater like Tatooine? That had been the _point_, hadn't it?

He stopped and leaned against the bulkhead, half-watching the boy awkwardly stand in the middle of the corridor. "Why'd that cruiser scare you?"

To his credit, Ben just looked at him as if he'd sprouted horns. "Because I don't want the Imps to catch me," he said, as if he were stating a self-evident fact.

Maybe if he hadn't spent so much time around Force-users, Han would have left it at that. But he'd had years to watch Leia's expression cloud over when she felt something wrong with the galaxy, and then more years of the blood draining from Hal's face every time they had a near miss with Rage. Everyone felt the Dark Side differently, Leia had told him once, but it was impossible to miss – like someone had sucked all the air or light out of a room.

"Who gave you the lightsaber?"

Ben's hand dropped to his belt, as if he had only just remembered what he was carrying. His eyes went very wide. "I – I just found it! It's not mine! Padreic said – "

_Of course he did_. If he hadn't known the cruiser was still lying in wait, Han would have turned the ship around and flown back to Tatooine, just for the pleasure of breaking the old man's jaw. "What did he say?"

The boy's mouth twisted, like he was trying to smile. "It's nothing. It's pretty stupid, really – "

"_Ben_."

He jerked his hand away from the lightsaber and folded his arms at his waist, resting them against his palms. "He said the Emperor would destroy me." His head jerked from side to side and his voice trembled – from fear or anger or simple exhaustion, Han couldn't tell. "I'm not a Jedi. I'm _not_. I _can't_ be."

This must have been what the boy's namesake had felt like, making facts out of half-truths and well-chosen words. Han was almost used to it by now.

"I know, kid." He hated himself as soon as the words left his mouth. "I know."


	6. Chapter 6

_"Wild rumors and known anomalies aside, it is highly unlikely that any Jedi Knights miraculously survived the initial Purges. The persistant stories of a vast Jedi army can be attributed to wishful thinking and fanciful imaginations - or, at best, to Organa's ill-fated attempt at reviving their order."_  
- Immalene Mir, _Myths and Cults of the Old Republic,_ Circes-Beston House, Inc.

_"The attack on the Whistler's Gate was the proverbial line in the sand. Once that line was crossed, there was no going back. The Rebellion doomed itself."_  
- Du Kindathar'ik, _The Ballad of the Whistler's Gate_ (Banned: Imperial Board of Culture)

* * *

The Circle  
Chapter 6

* * *

The bridge of the _Retaliator_ was eerily silent. Its crew hurried from one station to another, attempting to track a ship that shouldn't have eluded them in the first place, but not one of them issued a single order. They didn't need to – a testament to their considerable talents as much as to their fear of Darth Rage. They were among the best officers in the Imperial Navy, and their first priority was simply to find out what had gone so spectacularly wrong.

None of them had made a mistake. Rage was sure of that. Leaving aside the fact that his crew was the best in the Imperial Navy, he had spent enough time as a Rebel to recognize a dangerous escape attempt when he saw it. The freighter's stunt should have blown out its own engines or sent it flying blindly into the _Retaliator_'s waiting tractor beams. The fact that it hadn't was a testament to its pilot's skill.

Unless, of course, some other factor was at work.

Rage leaned on one of the bridge's narrow railings and scowled out the viewports, temporarily oblivious to his ship and crew. Even though Lieutenant Archimedes hadn't finished compiling her intelligence reports, he knew that the Darklighter fugitives and the missing message had been aboard the freighter. He doubted either of them had flown it, however, which meant that someone else was helping them.

But who would go up against his personal warship just to save two children? And were they trying to protect the message, or – as Rage was beginning to suspect – were they more interested in the fugitives themselves?

"My lord?" Captain Kraiz sounded more than a little nervous, but Rage had promoted the man for his competence, not for displays of false bravado. "We've finished calculating the freighter's trajectory and energy output. They can't have gone far."

"I'm aware of that," Rage murmured, his gaze never leaving the viewports. "Just tell me where they are, Captain."

"We've narrowed our search to ten systems." Captain Kraiz cleared his throat. "This all assumes they reached their destination, my lord. If they did perform a blind jump, it's entirely possible that - "

"They're alive." Rage straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. "Thank you, Captain. We'll hold position for now."

"My lord?"

In less pressing circumstances, he would have smiled at such carefully polite skepticism. "Access the Holonet grids in the targeted systems," he continued, "and place a bounty on the freighter and its passengers. A half-million credits should do it."

"We won't be pursuing them?"

"There are desperate people in this part of the galaxy," Rage said softly. He shook his head and smiled, hardly noticing when Kraiz took a quick step back. "No, Captain, we won't be pursuing them. We won't have to."

* * *

"So. That's your cousin, huh?"

Sasha didn't bother to look at Hal Horn, preferring to glare at the approaching planet far below her. It was small and muddy-brown, its surface crisscrossed with lines and gouges. "What about him?"

"Is he the one the Imps are after?"

Although it was phrased as a question, she had the distinct impression it was nothing of the kind. "We found a coded message and the Imps think we took it on purpose."

Hal's reflection was visible in the viewports. She glanced at it just in time to see him roll his eyes. "Did that message of yours come with a lightsaber?"

She _knew_ it had been a bad idea to bring that thing with them. "We didn't build it or anything, if that's what you mean. We found it, too." When Hal said nothing, she finally tilted her head long enough to frown at him, even though he had Melody in the cockpit to back him up. "Ben didn't do anything wrong, okay? He's nothing special."

"Who said he was anything special?"

"Someone back home. You." And her parents, now that she thought about it. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how strange they had been with Ben, insisting that he never leave Draco's Well when he hadn't ever wanted to in the first place.

Sasha had only seen one holo of Ben with his mother - the only one her family had ever owned, as far as she knew. It had sat on her parents' wardrobe for as long as she could remember, and even when she was little, she had been struck by how much her cousin didn't look like a Darklighter at all. While Aunt Rasca had been sharp-featured and square-jawed, Ben had the sort of striking coloring and round face that had always made her wonder what his father must have looked like. There was no way to be certain, of course. As her parents had always been quick to point out, neither one of them had ever set eyes on the man, and Aunt Rasca apparently hadn't bothered to describe him before she died.

So why all the precautions? Why go to such great lengths to keep Ben in Draco's Well? Why had Padreic given such dire warnings about the Imps – about the _Emperor_, as if someone as quiet as Ben could possibly attract that kind of attention?

Maybe she had been right after all. Maybe Ben's father had been something more than a smuggler - and her parents and Padreic and Aunt Rasca had known all along.

Sometimes people in the Dune Sea settlements had called her cousin a space bastard - and maybe it never bothered him, but it had always made Sasha grit her teeth and ball her hands into fists and come home with bruised knuckles and a black eye. Ben was her _family_. It didn't make a difference who was trying to hurt him, be they stuck-up Farstrider kids or smugglers like Hal or Darth Rage himself. She had been fiercely protective of him - her brother in every way that mattered - for as long as she could remember. She wasn't about to stop now.

That was probably what made her look at Hal the way she did, dangerous and no-nonsense like her mom had been. "If you do anything to Ben, I'll kill you."

Hal smirked, although he didn't seem to be terribly friendly about it. "You and what army?" When she just muttered something that would've made her mom scrub out her mouth with disinfectant, he sighed and jabbed a finger at the empty pilot's seat. "Either sit down and shut up or get out of the cockpit. I've got a ship to land."

Glaring for all she was worth, Sasha plopped down in the pilot's seat and stared out the viewport. "You're sure there's no Imps here, right?"

"We'll be fine if we're careful. Han knows what he's doing."

Melody snorted - apparently her opinion of Captain Solo wasn't nearly as high as Hal's - but she nodded anyway. "I'm from one of the Rim mining worlds. Trust me, they don't like Imps."

Sasha risked a glance back at her. "What if I don't?"

"What, trust me?" She grinned big and wide, with a nasty edge that made Sasha wish she had the family carbine in easy reach. "I'd just as soon tie you up with a fragging _bow_ and hand you over myself, don't get me wrong." Then the grin vanished, replaced by a cold, furious look that went straight out the viewport and through the planet, out into the depths of space. "But I'm not gonna do that," she said softly. "None of us will."

This was probably one of those moments when it was wiser to keep her mouth shut, but Sasha couldn't help herself. "Why not?"

To her surprise, Hal was the one who answered - and she wished he hadn't, because something about his expression was _old_, like he'd seen a hundred different Draco's Wells burning and lost a hundred different mothers all at once.

"Because no one deserves to be handed over to Rage," he said, his voice quiet and vicious. "_No one_. Not even you."

* * *

There were a handful of people Gavin Darklighter trusted with his life. Padreic definitely wasn't one of them.

This left him with a bit of a problem, because at that moment the odd-jobs-man was standing in the doorway to Gavin's detention cell, leaning on his cane and looking like a self-satisfied lunatic. An unconscious stormtrooper was just visible behind him, slumped against a wall. If Gavin knew Padreic at all - and, unfortunately, he did - half the garrison was probably in much the same state.

"You've never heard of subtlety, have you." He didn't bother to make this remotely resemble a question. Padreic wouldn't know subtlety if it hijacked a sandcrawler and ran him over.

Sure enough, Padreic just shrugged one shoulder, still far too pleased with himself. "My way gets the job done."

"What way? Mass homicide?"

The odd-jobs-man's smug smile vanished, taking any levity with it. "I don't kill, Darklighter."

Gavin refused to dignify that with an answer. Instead he climbed unsteadily to his feet. While he was still mobile, the Imps had been none too gentle about taking him into custody. "The cameras?"

"What do you think?"

The garrison would probably be picking bits and pieces of surveillance equipment out of the walls for weeks. "Ben and Sasha?"

"Safer than you are."

"That's not reassuring."

"Good." Padreic glanced over his shoulder. "I'd suggest we leave while we have the chance. Unless you would rather meet Rage's interrogators."

Gavin did his best to hide a shudder. "I'll pass," he said, and hurried around the odd-jobs-man to collect the unconscious stormtrooper's blaster rifle. Once he'd flicked the safety off, he started down the corridor. "Now where?"

"Not off world. Most of the docking bays are sealed, and I imagine they'll finish the rest once word of this little adventure gets out. That's standard procedure." Padreic fell into step, hobbling along faster than Gavin could have managed with that cane. "They seem to be leaving Liza's house alone, so we'll stop there first. After that, we'll work out the best way to get in contact with Sasha."

He nodded once, scanning two side corridors for stray stormtroopers. So far he hadn't found any - not conscious ones, anyway. Padreic was still frighteningly thorough when he chose to be. "And Olivea?"

Padreic said nothing.

That was all the answer he needed, of course - he had seen her go down during the struggle, her face seared half-off by a blaster bolt - but there was a grim finality in the old man's silence that would have made him bow his head, if only he'd had the time. Sasha and Ben hadn't been captured yet, which was a miracle ten times over. That was all Olivea would have cared about. She certainly wouldn't have wanted him grieving over her, not when the rest of their family was still out there somewhere.

They stepped out of the garrison just as two Imps rounded the nearby corner, obviously on the way back from patrol. Gavin swore softly and brought his stolen blaster up - but before he could so much as take aim, Padreic gripped his cane like an improvised lightsaber and spun once, quick and sharp. The motion carried him between the stormtroopers, who each went down with a blow right under the backs of their helmets. Neither of them had had the time do much more than raise their weapons. In all likelihood, they had never seen what hit them.

No, Padreic definitely hadn't lost his touch. Gavin wasn't sure if that worried him or not.

The odd-jobs-man was almost doubled over now. His face had gone very pale and he was leaning on his cane again, supporting himself with one trembling arm. Nonetheless, his expression was completely calm and his voice was more stubborn than exhausted.

"I told you," he said simply. "_I don't kill_."

_Now._ Now _you don't,_ Gavin corrected him in the relative privacy of his own head, _and a lot of good that'll do us if you die proving it._ Muttering to himself, he tucked the blaster rifle under one arm and hurried over, letting the taller man sling his free arm over his shoulders. That in itself wasn't pleasant; Padreic was heavier than he had any right to be. "Please tell me you've got a transport."

"Your landspeeder. In the garrison's garage." The odd-jobs-man sounded pleased with himself again. Figured.

Gavin decided that he didn't want to know how Padreic had gotten his hands on the family landspeeder, much less how he'd tricked the Imps into holding onto it for him. Shaking his head, he began helping Padreic along, wishing that he wasn't stuck relying on him - and that he didn't owe him so much.

But he _did_ owe him. If Padreic really had managed to get Ben and Sasha off world and away from the Empire's prying eyes, then there wasn't enough money in the galaxy to repay him.

_If Rage had caught them..._

Gavin shook his head. Hell, if Padreic saved the kids from Rage - if he let them live normal, simple lives somewhere far from the Core - he would go one better than repaying the old man.

He'd even begin to forgive him.

* * *

As Captain Solo led Ben through the _Icarus_, it became obvious just how little of the ship was actually used for carrying cargo - or for much of anything, really. Most of the hatchways and side corridors had been sealed off at some point in the past, possibly by more of Sasha's blind Jawas. Everything else was in a half-finished state of repair, as if neither the infamous Rebel nor his strange crew could be bothered to make their ship truly spaceworthy. None of them cared about it.

For a moment Ben felt very sorry for the poor freighter. Then he realized he was sympathizing with a flying deathtrap and hastily put that thought out of his head.

Besides the cockpit, the only decent part of the _Icarus_ was a converted cargo hold, which had been turned into something that remotely resembled a living space. There was a table and mismatched chairs, a few datapads stacked haphazardly in a corner, some floating targets, a little gaming console called _Amazing Aces!_ that was probably twice Ben's age, and a food prep station that looked as if it hadn't seen disinfectant in decades. An ancient astromech droid was poking at an open power hatch next to the sonic washers, beeping irritably to itself.

Captain Solo ignored the mess and stalked toward the prep station, absently bumping into the droid on his way over. It made an outraged squeak-blat noise and rotated its domed head in his general direction.

If the captain noticed the rebellious and probably vulgar droid, he didn't comment on it. "Sit down, kid."

Ben eyed the chairs warily. They all looked sticky. "Do I have to?"

Captain Solo ran one hand down his face. "Kid…" he began, sounding very put-upon, but then the droid spun around and Ben forgot about polite refusals entirely.

Before he quite knew what was happening, the little astromech droid had taken up a sort of irregular orbit around him, swiveling its dome as if it wanted to keep him in sight at all times. It rocked back and forth as it wheeled around the living quarters at full speed, beeping and whistling in a way that could only be called deliriously happy. He was very grateful it didn't have any arms, or else it probably would have tried to hug him.

It took a few seconds for Captain Solo to find his voice. When he did, he sounded worried and just a little furious. "Artoo!"

The droid - Artoo, Ben assumed - squeaked to a halt and made an extremely rude noise.

"This is our passenger," Captain Solo said, each word slow and deliberate and shaded with something that wasn't quite anger. "This is _Ben_. Got it?"

Artoo backed away from Ben and tilted forward on its stubby legs, as if it was thinking very hard. After a moment, it gave a soft, mournful sort of whistle and retreated to the open hatch, disappearing into the corridor.

Ben perched himself on the edge of the table, since he wasn't brave enough to try the chairs. "Did I do something wrong?"

"He thought you were someone else," Captain Solo said. "Forget it."

There was more to it than that. Ben could feel it like a heavy presence in the air. "Who?"

"Who what, kid?"

"Who did he think I was?"

There was a very long silence - one broken only by the faint hiss of the air vents and the distant sounds of the Icarus beginning to run through its landing cycle. Captain Solo had turned back to the prep station, fiddling with knobs and buttons, but Ben didn't need to see his face to notice the tense, almost frightened set to his shoulders. Even after the past few days, he nearly apologized for asking.

Nearly, but not quite. He stared down at his hands, and he kept his voice steady and quiet. "Who did he think I was, Captain?"

Captain Solo went still, just for a moment. Then he sighed and walked over, shoving a cup of caf at him. "Artoo used to know - " He cut himself off, then moved on so quickly that Ben almost didn't notice the pause. "He used to know who Rage was."

"You mean Skywalker?"

The only answer was a curt nod.

He wrapped his fingers around the caf cup. It was cold to the touch. "Do we look the same - me and Rage?"

"No," Captain Solo said quickly. "You're nothing alike."

"So why did - "

"Kid. Ben." He leaned against the bulkhead and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "He was here when I helped get Skywalker off that dustball you call home. That's it."

There was a note of warning in his voice that Ben decided he probably couldn't ignore. Instead he sipped the caf - it tasted awful - and tried to push away the nagging feeling that something about this was all wrong. "Why did you help us?"

Captain Solo just frowned at him.

"The Imps want us, right? And - and you used to know Rage, so wouldn't you be in more danger than us if we're caught?" He looked at the deck and the bulkhead and his boots, anywhere but at Captain Solo. "I'm really grateful. I just...we've had lots of help from people we don't know and I don't understand _why_."

"Padreic?"

Ben nodded. "He's the one who told me about Skywalker and what the Empire would do to me." He clutched the caf cup, as if squeezing it hard enough would make the horrible tightness in his chest go away. "What if someone else gets hurt just because I'm with them? What if _Sasha_ - "

He couldn't make himself say that particular fear. He just couldn't.

"You can't trust Padreic," Captain Solo said. He sounded tired - as if he had been angry at something for so long that it didn't mean much anymore. "He's got his own plans, and damned if I know what he wants to do with you."

Ben wished he didn't remember the strange, unfocused _wrongness_ that always seemed to cloak the odd-jobs-man. "Will he turn us over to the Emperor?"

To his astonishment, Captain Solo just shook his head once, as if the very idea were out of the question. "No one hates Palpatine more than that old bastard." He looked as if he were about to add something else, but then he seemed to think better of it. Instead he just clapped Ben on the shoulder once and started towards the corridor. "C'mon. Hal's probably halfway through the landing cycle by now. Let's see how bad the damage is."

Ben knew that was just an attempt to change the subject, but he was so glad for it that he hopped off the table and shoved the caf cup onto the counter before Captain Solo had left the living quarters. All the other lingering questions would just have to wait until the _Icarus_ was repaired.

Practical concerns had to come first, after all.

* * *

Up close Ludlii was a dusty little world, utterly unremarkable save for the mining pits gouged out of it. Machines twice the size of Draco's Well sprawled beside these holes, utterly dwarfed by them, but not one seemed to be operational. There was no sign of life and no movement other than towering dust storms swirling in the distance. Even though he had never seen a mine before and was only watching through the _Icarus_'s viewports, Ben couldn't help feeling a little uneasy.

"We've got clearance to land in one of the old docking bays," Hal said as everyone squeezed back into the cockpit. "It's a little removed from the main settlement, so we should be fine as long as we're careful."

"Any sign of the Imps?" Captain Solo asked.

He shook his head. "I had to punch through some heavy comm traffic, but nothing too strange. Looks like it's all-clear for now."

Ben thought that was the most reassuring piece of news he'd heard since he'd set foot on the freighter, but Captain Solo didn't seem to think so. "Just hurry up and land," he muttered.

Hal deftly maneuvered the _Icarus_ a few hundred feet over Ludlii's barren landscape, arcing toward a squat, square building some distance from the giant machines. As the freighter approached, a large roof hatch opened up, its jerky movements suggesting that no one had repaired its gears in a long time. Ben folded his arms - somehow all this poorly-kept machinery reminded him how far from home he was - and did his best not to fidget while he waited for the ship to set down safely. "Embarrassing fiery crash" was still high on his list of things that could go spectacularly wrong.

The interior of the cavernous docking bay was in better shape than the rest of Ludlii, but not by much. The best thing that could be said for it was that it was clean and neatly organized, every little-used piece of equipment set exactly in place and polished until it gleamed. It was also almost deserted. Although the bay looked as if it had been designed for a half-dozen ships - and had probably been used by that many and more, judging by some of the grooves on the floor - there were only a few beings moving among the maintenance equipment, and Captain Solo's banged-up little freighter was the only vehicle in sight.

At least it seemed friendly, or at least one of the people working in it did. A girl materialized next to the Icarus almost before the engines had spluttered off, waiting by the landing ramp with her hands clasped behind her back and even bouncing on her toes when it was finally lowered. She was about Ben's age, with a heart-shaped face and little red pigtails and a patched jumpsuit, and if her smile was anything to go by, she was trying to compensate for the rest of her chilly world all by herself.

"Sorry the clearance took so long," she said as Captain Solo started down the ramp, Melody trailing a half-step behind him. Ben reluctantly brought up the rear. He would much rather have stayed safely on the freighter with Hal and Sasha and maybe even Artoo, but someone had to see how much of the engines' casing had survived the blind jump. The girl paused long enough to wave at him before continuing. "There's been Imps all over the comm channels - more than usual, I mean. There's always Imps yelling about something." She wrinkled her nose. "I'm surprised you got through to my papa at all."

"Your _papa_." In other circumstances, Melody's expression would have been priceless.

The girl nodded. "Dev Iessos. He owns the docking bay. I'm Miri, his oldest." Her bright blue eyes darted from one face to another. "Do you even have a mechanic? No offense, but your engines look like you threw an asteroid at them and I think your coils are about to get up and run away."

Ben took a few steps forward, his anxiety fading. It was hard to stay worried when confronted with someone who not only knew plenty about machines, but also didn't bat an eye at the idea of repairing them. "I don't think they have one," he said. "I guess I'll do for now."

"You're braver than I'd be." Miri flashed another supernova smile. "Well, it'll go faster if there's two of us, so we might as well get to work. I'll grab my tools. Wait right here." She darted off, murmuring something about flash-welders as she went.

There was a long moment of silence before Ben stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "She seems nice."

Melody's expression of fascinated, bemused horror hadn't changed at all. "Any nicer and I'll have to kill her," she said.

* * *

"Nice" turned out to be an understatement. Miri Iessos was everywhere at once - hauling tools out of storage, sending some of her father's more sullen employees searching for supplies on the comm channels, fetching stepladders, and even scolding Captain Solo for not keeping the _Icarus_ in tip-top shape. "After all," she said, half-hidden by a pile of refueling hoses, "it's what keeps you alive out there. You'd be breathing space otherwise."

Captain Solo just looked put-upon. "Where's your father?"

Miri thrust the hoses into Ben's arms and pointed one grease-stained finger toward the far end of the docking bay. "Through the door on the right. You've got to hit it a couple times to open it. It sticks."

He nodded and beat a hasty retreat. Melody hung around for a few moments later, staring at Miri as if she was some kind of terrible new superweapon, before shaking her head once and hurrying after him.

Miri just wrinkled her nose after them. "Aren't they happy little balls of sunshine?" When Ben didn't answer - "no" was the only response he could think of and it struck him as rather inadequate - she scrambled up one of the ladders and held out one hand. "Hand me the resonance measure, will you?"

He set the hoses on the floor long enough to toss it up to her. "I think a couple of the fuel relays are blown."

"Yeah, I guessed." Miri stopped tinkering with the casing long enough to peer at him. "Don't take this wrong, but you don't seem like the type to be planet-hopping on this junkheap."

He had to smile at that. "I don't even like flying."

"Glad _someone_'s got their head on right." She hooked an arm around one of the ladder's rungs and leaned back far enough to wave the resonance measure with her free hand, taking in the whole docking bay. "Everyone here just wants to _go_ somewhere, like finding another world's gonna fix everything."

"It doesn't." He could have told her that even before he found the message. "Do you want to stay here?"

"Damn right." Miri smiled again - she didn't seem to know how to do anything else - but this time there was an edge to it, as if it was just habit and maybe she didn't really mean it. "Ludlii's my _home_. I'm not gonna leave it just because things are bad right now."

Ben frowned up at her. That didn't sound like the safe haven he'd been hoping for. "Bad?"

"Ludlii's independent - has been for hundreds of years now, since way back during the Republic." Miri's ever-present smile dimmed and she dropped her gaze for a moment. "It's just that the Republic never treated this place half as bad as the Imps do. They don't pay us enough to live on, so we can't keep our equipment running."

She sounded a lot like Uncle Gavin and Aunt Olivea had - only they'd just had a garage to worry about, not a whole planet. "What're you going to do?" he asked.

"We're not gonna revolt or anything," Miri said, "not after what happened to Cree's Cradle, but..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "We'd need a miracle to last much longer."

Ben wished there was something he could say or do to make things better for her. Of all the people he'd met in the last few days, she was the nicest and most level-headed - the one he could actually understand, if just because she so clearly loved Ludlii the same way he loved Draco's Well. "Why are you telling me this?"

She was very quiet for a long moment, and then she slid down the ladder, landing just a few feet from him. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The Imps put a bounty on this freighter, you know. Just a little while ago. That's why all the comm channels were tied up."

Even though he shouldn't have been surprised - not with the message sitting in his pocket - he felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. He'd heard about all kinds of bounty hunters back on Tatooine, and not one of them cared whether or not their quarry was innocent, just as long as they got paid. "How much?"

"A half-million credits," Miri said.

He couldn't imagine that much money. Draco's Well probably hadn't been worth that much. He tried to tell his heart to stop hammering against his ribs. "Does that mean you're going to turn us in?"

She reached over as if she wanted to squeeze his hand, but then she seemed to think better of it and settled for twisting her fingers in the folds of her jumpsuit. "Just be careful, okay? A half-million credits would be enough to save Ludlii for a while, and I think everybody here knows that."

"That's not making me feel any better."

"Then stick with me," Miri said, and then there was no mistaking the fierce edge to her grin this time. "I won't let anything happen to you. Promise."

* * *

"My lord."

Rage didn't glance at Captain Kraiz to know he had good news. "You have a lead?"

"We've just received a transmission from one of the mining colonies." Kraiz was too professional to smirk, but he seemed to be standing at attention more crisply than usual. "My lord, we have them."


	7. Chapter 7

_"A member of my family unwittingly hastened the destruction of the Republic. I do not intend to make a similar mistake. I would prefer that we maintain at least the pretence of legitimacy. I will continue to oppose the dissolution of the Imperial Senate, and if necessary, I will do so alone."_  
- Senator Pooja Naberrie, "Transcripts of Imperial Senate Session 914-62A" (classified)

_"It's hard work, you know. Being the hero."_  
- Jonos Rell, _I Am Captain Fantastik: The Extraordinary Man Behind the Groundbreaking Holodrama_, Imperial Board of Culture

* * *

The Circle  
Chapter Seven

* * *

Whatever Hal might have thought about Sasha Darklighter, he couldn't fault her work ethic. He'd been ready to leave the girl in the cockpit, but she'd insisted on following him around and had eventually convinced him to let her do some minor repairs herself - mostly by means of looking over his shoulder and rattling off different ways to fry various vital components.

"I live right by the Dune Sea," she said when he finally caved and pointed her towards a different part of the ship. "As if I don't know what a hydrospanner is."

Hal fought the urge to roll his eyes at her. "Like Ben?"

Sasha just laughed and disappeared down the corridor. Her answer was obvious. When it came to machines, _no one_ was quite like Ben.

The problem was that Hal was starting to think she was right. Ben was tackling the _Icarus_'s engines with the confidence and expertise of a trained engineer - and now that he was in his element, the previously quiet settler boy was suddenly a lot more willing to make demands. Melody had been sent off an errand to buy much-needed supplies, Sasha and Hal and Artoo had all been sent scurrying to different parts of the freighter while Ben rattled off detailed instructions over a comlink, and even Han had been politely ordered to tinker with the power settings a few times. He knew exactly what he was doing, even though he was working with a freighter that dated back to the Clone Wars and had been more or less obsolete long before he was born.

If that wasn't the Force at work, Hal didn't know what was.

He stopped trying to fix the atmospheric seals around the emergency hatch and frowned up at the _Icarus_'s unlikely passenger, who was animatedly explaining something to bubbly Miri Iessos. By all appearances Ben was oblivious to the way Miri seemed a half-second away from latching onto him and announcing their wedding date, which suggested that he was ten kinds of oblivious to his surroundings in general. Yes, there was a lightsaber clipped awkwardly to his belt, but Hal had spent his first few years with Leia Organa's would-be Jedi, and something about the way Ben carried himself told Hal that he had absolutely no idea how to wield that kind of weapon. He was undoubtedly using the Force - no one, no matter how brilliant, could possess his instinctive understanding of machines without it - but he didn't seem to be consciously aware of what he was doing. He certainly wasn't the source of that frighteningly powerful presence Hal had felt on Tatooine.

He was starting to suspect that Ben was exactly what he appeared to be - an Outer Rim settler from the middle of nowhere who just happened to have a particularly strong connection to the Force and a very unfortunate name. He had no clue what he'd stumbled into the middle of.

Ben finally seemed to notice Hal's gaze. He blinked down at him curiously for a moment, temporarily distracted from whatever miracle he was pulling off with the engines. "Did you need something?"

_You're going to get us all killed_.

The thought didn't surprise Hal half as much as it should have.

"Just wanted to know how long before we can take off," he said out loud.

Miri was the one who answered, although not before wrinkling her nose in the general direction of the engines. "A couple hours, maybe?"

"It'll go faster if Melody comes back with the right parts," Ben added, "but this ship is a little old, so I don't know how much luck she'll have."

Hal sighed. That hadn't been the answer he wanted to hear. "Just hurry it up. The sooner we get off this rock, the better."

He needn't have bothered. Ben didn't even wait for him to finish his sentence before he went back to work.

On the bright side, the _Icarus_ might actually get a competent mechanic out of this mess. Assuming they survived.

Hal stomped back up the ramp and into the freighter, feeling the Force press down on him like it was determined to suffocate him.

Who was he kidding? He knew what this kind of foreboding meant.

They were all going to die.

* * *

"If you do that again," Gavin said through gritted teeth, "I'll kill you."

Padreic grinned at him.

"Slowly. _Painfully._"

"You're just jealous that I'm a better driver."

Gavin glanced over his shoulder at the Mos Espa inhabitants who had just finished diving for cover. He doubted any of them would agree, just like he doubted that Padreic gave a damn what they - or Gavin - thought of his piloting.

"Oh, yes," he said flatly. "You're _fantastic._"

The "that" in question had been a turn down a narrow alley that had practically tilted the Darklighter family's landspeeder on its side, followed by a twisting passage _through_ a street bazaar. Gavin was still seeing his fairly eventful life flash before his eyes - and yes, he'd spent a lot of his youth racing through Beggar's Canyon, and maybe he'd wanted to be a fighter pilot before he'd met Olivea, but that was different. That was _flying_.

This was just insanity.

"_Padreic_."

The odd-jobs-man's smirk wasn't reassuring in the slightest. He took another corner in much the same manner, somehow avoiding a fiery crash with a fuel carrier in the process, and started down the winding streets that would eventually take them out of Mos Espa's old slave quarters and into the most ancient part of the spaceport. Olivea's aunt Liza lived somewhere in that maze, terrorizing her landlord, her neighbors, and random passers-by alike with her own particular brand of paranoia. Aside from necessary visits and the inevitable unpleasant encounter at his wedding, Gavin had tried to avoid her as much as possible.

That wasn't an option anymore. Gavin was an escaped prisoner, and he couldn't endanger his own aunts and uncles and cousins by turning to them for assistance.

Not when Liza already had experience with this sort of thing.

Padreic stopped the landspeeder beside a small, squat shop that sold something unidentifiable in green earthenware jars. A metal staircase bolted precariously to one side of the building led up to the apartment on the top floor, where a sign announced that trespassers would be shot, pushed off the roof, run over with a sandcrawler, and then shot again for good measure.

Gavin paid the warning about as much mind as he always did - which was to say none at all - and banged hard on the door.

A moment later he was nose to barrel with a blaster pistol, but he didn't pay that much mind either. He'd had years to get used to his lone in-law.

"Liza," he said as patiently as he could. "It's _me_."

There was a disbelieving snort, but the blaster lowered enough to point at his stomach instead of his head. Liza Newsuns resembled her niece enough that it was easy to imagine what Olivea might have looked like in a few decades: blond hair bleached by the suns and slowly going white with age, a weathered and browned face, and confident grip on her weapon. Despite the heat, she was wearing any number of shawls and scarves draped around her bony shoulders. Gavin knew for a fact that there were at least a couple more weapons hidden somewhere in their folds, along with vibroblades and possibly a concussion grenade.

"What're you doing here?" she asked, finally making the blaster disappear somewhere on her person. "No one's shipped you off to Kessel yet?"

"No," Gavin said with what he felt was a superhuman amount of patience, "and I'd like to keep it that way. Can we please come in?"

Liza glanced over his shoulder at Padreic, who smiled and bowed slightly, and then looked back at Gavin with irritation written all over her face. "All right," she muttered, stepping away from the door just enough to let him squeeze inside. "But don't expect me to hide you when the Imps come looking for you."

The interior of Liza's apartment was decorated with more cloth - quilts, spreads, drapes, heavy curtains hung across the one window to block out the sunlight. Every surface was covered with tacky figurines of various Core tourist attractions, mass-produced sculptures of frolicking bantha cubs, and old Clone War propaganda holos of impossibly chubby-cheeked little children and brave-looking soldiers. It was only when one really examined the layout of the single room that other things became apparent. The holoproj on the table, for example, may have been playing a brassy centuries-old Corellian tune, but it was also in good repair and was far more state-of-the-art than anything else Liza owned. The overstuffed furniture had been arranged in such a way as to provide barriers in the event of a siege, and most of the ever-present quilts were made of energy-absorbing fabric. There were no doubt weapons concealed in every nook and cranny. Even the window was just large enough to serve as an escape hatch.

It was, in short, a living space ideally suited to a former member of the Rebellion's intelligence network.

Liza glared at Gavin until he sat and then slammed a tray full of mugs down hard enough to slosh cold bean tea onto the tablecloth. "I could ask you how you got yourself out of Imp custody," she said as she settled herself opposite him, "but I think I can guess."

She was staring right at Padreic as she spoke. The odd-jobs-man simply smiled again and claimed his mug before returning to his corner of the room, where he seemed content to hover like a particularly enigmatic guard.

"I might have helped," he admitted.

"You can't leave well enough alone, more like. As if your _help_ has ever done us any good." Liza grabbed her own mug and frowned at Gavin. "What happened to my niece?"

Gavin grimaced. He wasn't sure he was ready to talk about this. "She wouldn't let the Imps in our house. Blocked the doorway."

"Stubborn girl," Liza muttered. "What about you? Why are you still here?"

He met her eyes levelly. "Because Olivea got to the doorway first."

"And it never occurred to the pair of you to take the landspeeder and _go?_"

Gavin shook his head. "One of the vaporators wasn't working. Ben took the landspeeder to go fix it."

"Hmph." Liza slurped her tea, shoulders hunched. "Always comes back to that boy, doesn't it."

"Olivea wouldn't have wanted him captured."

"She was too attached to him. You, too. You were both _idiots_, you know that?" Liza put her cup down and leaned forward like an Imp interrogator, age-spotted hands resting on her knees. "I told you he was just going to bring trouble, but the two of you were _so_ determined. And your sister! I told you not to tell her anything, but _no_, no one listens to an old woman!"

Gavin clenched his hands into fists. Somehow, he managed to keep most of the anger out of his voice. "She deserved to know."

"Then why wouldn't that stupid girl at least change his _name?_"

"That stupid girl was my little sister," Gavin said very quietly. "She was Ben's mother, and she decided he was going to keep the name his father gave him. Olivea and I respected her wishes. Please do the same."

Liza stared down at her lap and went uncharacteristically silent. The lines on her face were sharper and more defined than they had been the last time Gavin had seen her and her shoulders were hunched just a little more - from age or grief, he didn't pretend to know.

"What happened to Sasha?" she asked at last.

"She's with Ben," Padreic said mildly.

"And that will keep her safe, will it?"

"The Empire knows her face now. Nothing is going to keep her completely safe."

Liza turned in her seat just enough to look at him. "As if she was ever completely safe before - not with that boy."

Something in Padreic's expression changed ever so slightly. "This isn't Ben's fault."

"No," Liza snapped. "It's _yours_. All of this is your fault, and nothing you do will ever make up for that."

Padreic went very still. Gavin did too, for different reasons. Like Liza, and like Olivea and Rasca and all the other people privy to this particular secret, he had always been aware of whom the odd-jobs-man used to be, and he had some idea of what he was still capable of. It wasn't that he disagreed with Liza - he just wished she hadn't been quite so blunt.

But Padreic only dropped his gaze to his mug, as if he were looking for the right kind of answer in it. When he raised his head again, there was a faint and completely humorless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"No," he agreed. "It won't."

"Whatever you're planning to do with that boy," Liza said, voice deceptively soft, "it won't work. You're just going to ruin a lot more lives."

The smile disappeared. Now Padreic just looked lost and much, much older than he ought to, and he gave both Liza and Gavin a look that could almost be described as pleading.

"I need to know I can save _someone_," he said, and then settled into morose, contemplative silence.

* * *

Ben was elbow-deep in assorted circuitry when Miri latched onto his arm and tugged. "Let's go exploring."

He stared at her.

"In the storage bays," she clarified quickly. "Wouldn't this go a little faster if you had the right parts?"

"Um." Ben glanced back down at the engines, which were still unusable even after all the jury-rigging he'd done, and admitted that maybe she had a point. "Doesn't the stuff in the storage bays belong to other people?"

"No one's touched half that stuff since before I was born. I don't think anyone remembers what's back there anymore." Miri sat back on her heels. There was a stubbornness behind her cheerful smile that he was sure he hadn't seen before. She also didn't seem inclined to let go of him.

"Okay," he said reluctantly, "but only for a little bit. If we don't find something right away, we come right back."

"Deal." Miri all but dragged him toward the ladder propped against the engines. "Come _on._"

Ben followed at a more sedate pace. She really was right - especially since he doubted Melody was going to find any of the parts he needed - but he didn't like leaving Sasha behind, even for a few minutes.

On the other hand, if he didn't get the engines fixed, he'd have much bigger problems to worry about. He thought of the strange message and of what had happened to Aunt Olivea, and those few horrible moments he'd spent hiding under the family landspeeder while the Imps passed overhead.

If there was a chance Miri's spare parts could help - even if it was _technically_ stealing - he had to check.

That didn't change the fact that the docking bay suddenly felt freezing cold.

* * *

Melody wasn't finding the supplies Ben had asked her to look for.

Actually, Melody wasn't finding _anything._

The handful of stores and stalls that weren't completely abandoned were full of empty shelves and a handful of skittish, wary employees and customers. Almost everyone she saw ducked out of sight the second she laid eyes on them. The few who seemed belligerent quickly found somewhere else to be when Melody rested her hand on one of her holsters, but there weren't many people even willing to look her in the eye. The entire colony felt hollow and muted. The only sounds were faint hushed conversations and the wind howling outside, between the rows of identical prefab buildings. The noise that was _supposed_ to be there - the ever-present thrum of the gigantic mining machines that loomed over the horizon like manmade mountains, so deep and constant that it should have made the ground rumble beneath her boots - was completely absent.

For Melody, who had spent her earliest years on a colony much like this one, it was worse than disconcerting. It was like hearing the last painful gasps of a dying world.

She wanted off this planet right the hell now.

The siren started so suddenly that she had one of her blasters half out of its holster before she realized what she was doing. No one else seemed to notice her actions - not when the few other people in the shops dropped whatever they had been doing and scattered. Melody took advantage of the panic to corner an elderly clerk before he could lock her out of his small market, and when he ducked behind the counter, she just reached over it and snagged him by his collar, dragging him up so she could look him in the eye.

"What the fragging hell is _that?_" she snapped.

The clerk squirmed in her grip. "Proximity alarm!" he yelped. "Imps! Let me go!"

Melody shoved him away. By the time he'd regained his balance, she was already long gone from his shop. She pushed past the last few stragglers and sprinted toward the hangar bay as fast as she could, switching on her comlink as she ran.

"Hal! We've got company!"

* * *

"I know, I know! Get back here!"

Hal switched off his own comlink to thwart any eavesdroppers and pressed one hand over an ear, trying to hear himself think. Like Han and Sasha and even Artoo, he'd hurried outside the _Icarus_ as soon as the siren had gone off. The hangar bay was more crowded than he'd ever seen it and was generally in a state of absolute pandemonium. There were people running in ten different directions, people snatching up equipment and trying to hide it, people carrying weapons without any real indication that they knew how to use them - nothing good, in other words.

There was also no sign whatsoever of Ben.

"Mel's on her way back," he said to Han, who was watching the chaos with an absolutely unreadable expression. "Ben said we had another couple hours on the engines, but maybe we can - "

"Don't bother," Han said tightly. "It's Rage."

He'd known that, of course, but hearing it said out loud didn't make it any better.

"What do you mean it's Rage?" Sasha asked anxiously. "We have to find Ben and get out of here, right?"

Han patted her lightly on the shoulder and walked up the ramp, pausing long enough only to make shooing motions at Artoo. The little droid waited until he disappeared into the _Icarus_ before beeping unhappily and rolling slowly away from the ship.

Sasha turned huge, frighteningly young eyes on Hal.

"Right?" she repeated, uncertainty creeping into her voice. "We're leaving, right?"

Hal scrubbed his face. "The engines aren't fixed, kid. There's Imps right on top of us. They know we're here. You tell me how we're supposed to leave."

"Then - then we have to find somewhere to hide and - "

"Are you fragging _deaf?_ Didn't I just say they know we're here? Someone gave us away!"

He knew it wasn't fair to yell at her like that. She was just a kid - and yes, he'd already had who knew how many close calls with the Empire by the time he was her age, but Sasha wasn't Force-sensitive and her father hadn't been a would-be Jedi with a messiah complex. Even so, he couldn't help it. He'd spent his whole life dodging Imps, and to be caught like _this_, because of Han's favors and a pair of settlers -

"Where's Ben?" Sasha asked. She was trying so hard not to look scared that it almost seemed like she was standing at attention, squared shoulders and all. "I thought he was fixing the engines."

"Why would I know?" Hal muttered. "He ran off if he has any sense."

"He wouldn't have left me behind."

"You sure about that?" he asked, only to hate himself for it when she glared at him, clearly appalled at the very idea. "All right, all right. Sorry. He's not here, that's all that matters, and if you've got any sense you'll tell the Imps he was never on board in the first place."

"We're just gonna surrender?"

"I know how Han thinks." He frowned after Artoo in time to see the little droid vanish around a corner, just as the last few Ludlii miners finished grabbing equipment and disappearing from view. "No point getting more people killed than we have to."

He thought he could hear the whine of an approaching shuttle, or maybe that was just his own imagination.

* * *

Deep in the winding, poorly-lit maze of old shipping crates, storage containers, and rusting piles of obsolete spare parts, an argument was happening.

Or at least half an argument was happening, because Ben figured that an argument required two people to happen. Miri was trying to argue, sure. She was telling him they had to stay put, didn't he hear the siren, she knew back ways out of the storage bays and it'd take the Imps ages to search here and wasn't he _listening?_ She was also holding onto his wrist with both hands, but that wasn't helping any more than her talking was, because Ben had the stocky build a Dune Sea settler who'd spent his whole life doing a lot of heavy lifting. When he had to be, he was strong. Since Miri didn't seem inclined to let go, he was towing her along.

He also wasn't responding to her. He wasn't saying or thinking anything at all, besides inner recriminations for leaving Sasha and the _Icarus_, until finally he stopped and rounded on Miri so fast that she slammed into him.

"It doesn't matter how big this place is if the Imps can hear us," he whispered as patiently as he could.

Miri didn't stop talking, but she did look embarrassed and lower her voice. "I'm _sorry_," she said quietly, and she really did seem to mean it. "I'm serious, though. You can't go back. They'll just catch you."

"Then I guess they catch me," Ben said, even though as soon as the words left his mouth, he thought they sounded like the kind of stupid things one heard people say in those bad holodramas Sasha loved. The problem, he was realizing, was that just because they were silly didn't mean they weren't also true. "My cousin's there. So're the people who helped me. I need to go back."

"But - " Miri began.

Ben tried to look confident and reassuring, although considering his heart was hammering against his ribs and he felt like he was about to throw up from sheer terror, he doubted he was doing a very good job. "You should probably go. The Imps will look here soon and I don't want you to get in trouble." He tried to smile. "Thanks for all the help and stuff. It was really nice of you."

That apparently wasn't the right thing to say, because Miri looked like she was about to burst into tears. He was so bad at this.

He was debating gently shaking her off and trying to find his own way out of the storage bays - no doubt getting himself hopelessly lost in the process - when she made a little whimpering noise and started pulling on his wrist again, this time in the opposite direction as before.

"This way," she whispered. "It's not just hiding behind a bunch of crates, I swear. You believe me, right?"

Ben nodded.

She started crying for real.

He was so, _so_ bad at this.

He was also very glad that he'd agreed to follow Miri. She pulled him on a winding, tangled path through the storage bay, ducking behind boxes and squeezing between great looming piles of rusted machinery, until they wound up standing in front of a ladder. Miri put a finger to her lips and pointed up. The two of them climbed for what Ben was sure had to be three or four stories, until they emerged inside something that might have been a flight control tower, back when the big hangar bay had actually seen enough traffic to warrant one. Now it was just one more place to dump old junk - unused chairs, simple construction tools like hammers, even something that looked like an old flight helmet. In any other circumstances, Ben would have felt bad for whoever was in charge of hauling all that stuff up there in the first place.

As it was, he'd found something a little more interesting.

"No one will be able to find us here," Miri was saying, but Ben wasn't listening. He pushed past her and hurried over to the tower's controls. They didn't look like anything he'd seen before, but machines were machines. They weren't like people, who were messy and strange and did odd things for no reason. There was always a certain logic to them, in the way the circuits were laid out and even in the way the programs all locked together, and even the most eccentric ones were easy to understand if one just knew where to _look -_

The controls flickered to life.

Miri leaned over his shoulder. "How did you - what are you doing?"

"I don't know," Ben said honestly. A moment later something clicked into place. "I think I can control the hangar bay doors from here. If I can keep them closed, maybe that'll give everyone time to hide."

"You can _do_ that? I thought you just fix ships!"

"Landspeeders and vaporators, mostly."

Miri gaped at him. "The only reason we can hide up here is because no one uses this place anymore. If you start controlling the doors remotely - "

" - then they'll be able to find me," Ben finished. "I told you, it's okay if they catch me." She was still leaning over him, so he nodded to the far corner of the tower with all the abandoned tools. "Could you stand over there for a second? I need to be able to reach everything."

She bit her lip and stepped back, and Ben went back to trying to focus on the controls. They were very, very different from anything he'd ever used before, but he _needed_ them to work, he _needed_ to understand them - and now, suddenly, they were making perfect sense to him. He was very distantly aware of the fact that this meant something, and that when he had the time to think about it he probably wasn't going to like it, but that didn't matter right now. All that mattered was keeping the doors closed long enough to buy time - and that, at least, he could do.

Something blurred past him and smashed into the controls, destroying them in a shower of sparks and circuits and broken metal.

For a moment Ben could only stare down at the mess, stunned. Then, almost unwillingly, he turned to look at Miri.

She clutched the hammer like it was a lifeline, staring right at him and shaking her head from side to side.

"I'm trying to _save_ you," she choked out around a sob. "I'm trying so hard to save you. Why can't you just _stop?_"

Something seemed to drop out from under Ben's feet, like he was in freefall and hadn't quite realized it yet.

"I'm sorry," Miri whispered. "I'm really, _really_ sorry."

Ben tried to push his jumbled thoughts together into something like words. She wasn't making any sense. _None_ of this was making any sense. "What - why did you - ?"

Miri looked up at him pleadingly.

"Because I'm the one who told the Imps you were here," she said.

* * *

The shuttle turned out to be a troop transports and a pair of small escort ships. They took their time about landing, apparently confident that their prey wasn't going anywhere. By the time the transport had disgorged stormtroopers into the hangar bay, Han and Hal had already wiped the ship's logs and navicomputer database, and Sasha had been enlisted to yank out the memory core and smash it to pieces with the nearest blunt instrument. The _Icarus_ would never going to fly again - but given what was about to happen to its crew, that was far from Han's biggest concern.

All three of them exited the ship their hands up, Han in the front and Sasha kept between him and Hal to protect her as much as possible. Stormtroopers surrounded them and cuffed them instantly, but they weren't what interested him. It was the woman standing at the foot of the ramp that got his full attention.

"Captain Solo," she said, nodding politely. "I'm Lieutenant Archimedes. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I wish it were under better circumstances."

Han wasn't in the mood to bother with formalities. "Your boss too busy to come here himself?"

"Lord Rage looks forward to speaking with you and your crew." Lieutenant Archimedes glanced briefly at Hal and Sasha. "_All_ of your crew, Captain Solo."

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"Our intelligence is quite thorough. Your gunner appears to be absent, and you seem to have misplaced your astromech droid as well."

Behind him, Han could almost feel Sasha tense up. She had noticed the same thing he had, then - the person Archimedes had left out.

She didn't know Ben had been on board.

He kept his face carefully blank and tried to will Sasha to do the same. _Don't blow it, kid. Don't blow it - _

By some miracle, Archimedes misread his expression. She nodded to one of the stormtrooper captains flanking her. "Please search his ship. Be sure to check for smuggling compartments," she added with a glance in Han's direction, as if they were sharing a joke between friends. Han had the sudden urge to punch her in the face.

Sasha didn't say a word.

"While they're conducting their search," Archimedes continued, "allow me to personally escort you back to the _Retaliator_. Lord Rage is anxiously awaiting your arrival."

Han glanced back at Hal, whose blank expression was spoiled by the way all the blood had drained out of his face, and at Sasha, who just looked terrified.

He hoped Melody knew to look for Artoo - and he hoped Ben, wherever he was, had the sense not to try anything stupid.

* * *

The only sound in the control tower was Miri's ragged breathing.

Ben tried to ignore the cold pit in his gut, the way sheer fury seemed to suddenly cloud his vision, and desperately struggled to think. If this had been one of Sasha's holodramas, he would have known what to do. He would have known not to trust Miri in the first place, because she wouldn't have been kind and cheerful and helpful almost to a fault, and she wouldn't look much same now as she had when he'd first met her just a few hours ago - the same pretty red-headed girl with engine grease on her face, but not smiling anymore.

"Why?" he asked at last.

His voice sounded like he'd really been screaming, instead of just feeling like he wanted to.

"It was for Ludlii." Miri's voice was soft, but her words came faster and faster, as if she didn't know how to stop. "The bounty. It - it was so much money and we need it so badly here and my dad works so hard and I've got my little brothers to worry about, and I recognized your ship from the bounty notice when it was landing and I thought you'd all be Rebels, but then I met you and - " She finally broke off and looked back down at the hammer, as if surprised realize that she was still carrying it. It hit the floor with an echoing crash.

Ben clutched at the broken control panel. He was suddenly terrified of what he would do if he didn't find something to hold on to. "But you're trying to hide me."

"Because you're a regular person," Miri said wretchedly. "I told them you weren't on the ship. I said there was only one passenger. The Imps wouldn't have come if it was just the crew and I thought they wouldn't hurt a kid like your cousin - "

"The Imps killed her mother!"

Miri flinched.

Ben gripped the edge of the control panel with both hands, hard enough that the metal almost cut through his palms, and tried to get a grip on himself. He couldn't change what Miri had done. Sasha was counting on him, and if he didn't keep his head clear, he wasn't going to be able to help her or anyone else.

He glanced at the control tower's windows. They were almost completely blocked by junk and opaque with decades of grime. It would take too long to clean them. "Is there a place were we can see most of the hangar bay?" he asked.

Miri nodded slowly. "Yeah, but it'll be a lot harder to hide there. I don't think we should - "

"I'll go find it myself, then."

"No. No, I'll show you." Miri took a few steps toward the ladder, then stopped and looked back. "You understand, right? Why I did it? Wouldn't you do the same thing to save your home?"

Ben ignored her. He didn't dare answer.

He was too afraid he'd say "Yes."


End file.
